Claude Chabrol's cinema is generally associated with a specific type of psychological thriller, one set in the French provinces and fascinated with murder, incest, fragmented families, unstable spaces and inscrutable female characters. But Chabrol's films are both deceptively accessible and deeply reflexive, and in this innovative reappraisal of his filmography Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze explores the Chabrol who was influenced by Balzac, Magritte and Stanley Kubrick. Bringing to the fore Chabrol's 'aesthetic of opacity', the book deconstructs the apparent clarity and comfort of his chosen genre, encouraging the viewer to reflect on the relationship between illusion and reality, and the status of the film image itself.

French filmmaker Christophe Honore challenges audiences with complex cinematic form, intricate narrative structures, and aesthetically dynamic filmmaking. But the limited release of his films outside of Europe has left him largely unknown to U.S. audiences. In Christophe Honore: A Critical Introduction, authors David A. Gerstner and Julien Nahmias invite English-speaking scholars and cineastes to explore Honore's three most recognized films, Dans Paris (2006), Les Chansons d'amour (2007), and La Belle personne (2008)-"the trilogy." Gerstner and Nahmias analyze Honore's filmmaking as the work of a queer auteur whose cinematic engagement with questions of family, death, and sexual desire represent new ground for queer theory. Considering each of the trilogy films in turn, the authors take a close look at Honore's cinematic technique and how it engages with France's contemporary cultural landscape. With careful attention to the complexity of Honore's work, they consider critically contested issues such as the filmmaker's cinematic strategies for addressing AIDS, the depth of his LGBTQ politics, his representations of death and sexual desire, and the connections between his films and the New Wave. Anchored by a comprehensive interview with the director, the authors incorporate classical and contemporary film theories to offer a range of cinematic interventions for thinking queerly about the noted film author. Christophe Honore: A Critical Introduction reconceptualizes the relationship between film theory and queer theory by moving beyond predominant literary and linguistic models, focusing instead on cinematic technique. Students and teachers of queer film will appreciate this thought-provoking volume.

Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek (who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in Carrie). Indeed Quentin Tarantino named Blow Out as one of his top three favorite films, praising De Palma as the best living American director. Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works. What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, author Douglas Keesey takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films. Written in an accessible style, and including a chapter on every one of his films to date, this book is for anyone who wants to know more about De Palma's controversial films or who wants to better understand the man who made them.

Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain examines queer theory as it has emerged in the past three decades and discusses how Brokeback Mountain can be understood through the terms of this field of scholarship and activism. Organized into two parts, in the first half the author discusses key canonical texts within queer theory, including the work of writers as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. He provides an historical account of the questions these scholars have posed to our understanding of sexualities-both normative and non-normative-in the historical past and in contemporary life, as well as a discussion of the theories of sexuality and gender offered by these scholars as these phenomena shape the experiences of men and women in the genital, bodily, erotic, discursive, and cultural dimensions. The second part examines Ang Lee's 2005 feature film, Brokeback Mountain, in order to understand the claims and insights of queer theory. Tracing the film's adaptation by screenwriter Larry McMurtry of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story of the same title, this portion of the book examines the film's narrative about two working-class men in the rural mid-20th-century U.S. and the meanings of the sexual and emotional bond between the pair that develops over the course of two decades.

Since 1996, Alexander Payne (b. 1961) has made six feature films and a short segment of an omnibus movie. Although his body of work is quantitatively small, it is qualitatively impressive. His movies have garnered numerous accolades and awards, including two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay. As more than one interviewer in this volume points out, he maintains an impressive and unbroken winning streak. Payne's stories of human strivings and follies, alongside his mastery of the craft of filmmaking, mark him as a contemporary auteur of uncommon accomplishment. In this first compilation of his interviews, Payne reveals himself as a captivating conversationalist as well. The discussions collected here range from 1996, shortly after the release of his first film, Citizen Ruth, to the 2013 debut of his film, Nebraska. Over his career, he muses on many subjects including his own creative processes, his commitment to telling character-centered stories, and his abiding admiration for movies and directors from across decades of film history. Critics describe Payne as one of the few contemporary filmmakers who consistently manages to buck the current trend toward bombastic blockbusters. Like the 1970s director-driven cinema that he cherishes, his films are small-scale character studies that manage to maintain a delicate balance between sharp satire and genuine poignancy.

Philippe Grandrieux is one of cinema's only living true radicals and feted as one of the most innovative and important film makers of his generation. His consistently controversial work remains, however, relatively unknown outside of the international art film festival circuit. In this volume, the first book-length study of the work of Grandrieux in any language, Greg Hainge provides an overview and critical analysis of Grandrieux's entire career during which he has produced works for television, video installations, photography, performance pieces, documentary films, short films and prize-winning feature films. As well as providing an overview, the book argues that a critical appraisal of his work necessarily leads us to problematize many of the critical orthodoxies that have been formed in recent times, to reject the concept of a haptic cinema and to supplant this instead with the idea of a sonic cinema.

Philippe Grandrieux is one of cinema's only living true radicals and feted as one of the most innovative and important film makers of his generation. His consistently controversial work remains, however, relatively unknown outside of the international art film festival circuit. In this volume, the first book-length study of the work of Grandrieux in any language, Greg Hainge provides an overview and critical analysis of Grandrieux's entire career during which he has produced works for television, video installations, photography, performance pieces, documentary films, short films and prize-winning feature films. As well as providing an overview, the book argues that a critical appraisal of his work necessarily leads us to problematize many of the critical orthodoxies that have been formed in recent times, to reject the concept of a haptic cinema and to supplant this instead with the idea of a sonic cinema.

Warsaw- and London-based filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson are often recognized internationally as pioneers of the 1930s Polish avant-garde. Yet, from the turn of the century to the end of the 1920s, Poland's literary and art scenes were also producing a rich array of criticism and early experiments with the moving image that set the stage for later developments in the avant-garde. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Kamila Kuc draws on myriad undiscovered archival sources to tell the history of early Polish avant-garde movements-Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Constructivism-and to reveal their impact on later practices in art cinema.

Since the 1980s the number of women regularly directing films has increased significantly in most Western countries: in France, Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat have joined Agnes Varda in gaining international renown, while British directors Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold have forged award-winning careers in feature film. This new volume in the Thinking Cinema series draws on feminist theorists and critics from Simone de Beauvoir on to offer readings of a range of the most important and memorable of these films from the 1990s and 2000s, focusing as it does so on how the films convey women's lives and identities.Mainstream entertainment cinema traditionally distorts the representation of women, objectifying their bodies, minimizing their agency,and avoiding the most important questions about how cinema can 'do justice' to female subjectivity: Kate Ince suggests that the films of independent women directors are progressively redressing the balance, and thereby reinvigorating both the narratives and the formal ambitions of European cinema. Ince uses feminist philosophers to cast a new veil over such films as Sex Is Comedy, Morvern Callar, White Material, and Fish Tank; and includes a timeline ofdevelopments in women's film-making and feminist film theory from 1970 to 2011.

Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos is one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world today, yet his films are still largely unknown to the American public. In the first book in English to focus on Angelopoulos's unique cinematic vision, Andrew Horton provides an illuminating contextual study that attempts to demonstrate the quintessentially Greek nature of the director's work. Horton situates the director in the context of over 3,000 years of Greek culture and history. Somewhat like Andrei Tarkovsky in Russia or Antonioni in Italy, Angelopoulos has used cinema to explore the history and individual identities of his culture. With such far-reaching influences as Greek myth, ancient tragedy and epic, Byzantine iconography and ceremony, Greek and Balkan history, modern Greek pop culture including bouzouki music, shadow puppet theater, and the Greek music hall tradition, Angelopoulos emerges as an original "thinker" with the camera, and a distinctive director who is bound to make a lasting contribution to the art form.

In a series of films including "The Travelling Players," "Voyage to Cythera," "Landscape in the Mist," "The Suspended Step of the Stork," and most recently in "Ulysses' Gaze" starring Harvey Keitel (winner of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix), Angelopoulos has developed a remarkable cinematic style, characterized by carefully composed scenes and an enormous number of extended long shots. In an age of ever decreasing attention spans, Angelopoulos offers a cinema of contemplation.

An intimate, moving, dramatic story about the musicians in a great orchestra who make music come alive in performance and recording. The musicians here are members of the fabled Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Seiji Ozawa, during a season highlighted by Mahler's Second Symphony, The Resurrection.

This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world's great filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. His career began in the silent era and ended as the French New Wave was winding down. In between, Duvivier made over sixty films in a long and at times difficult career. He was adept at literary adaptation, biblical epic, and film noir, and this groundbreaking volume illustrates in great detail Duvivier's eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in works such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur. -- .

Can blockbuster films be socially relevant or are they just escapist diversions to entertain the masses and enrich the studios? Not every successful film contains thoughtful commentary but some that are marketed as pure entertainment do seriously engage social issues. Popular science fiction films of the late 1970s and early 1980s-such as George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, Ridley Scott's Alien and Aliens, and James Cameron's Terminator films-present a critique of our engagement with technology in a way that resonates with 1960s counterculture. As challengers of the status quo's technological underpinnings, Luke Skywalker, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor echo the once-popular social criticism of philosopher Herbert Marcuse and speak directly to the concerns of people living in a technologically complex society. The films of Lucas, Scott and Cameron made money but also made us think about the world we live in.

Learn about the visual and performing arts in The Movie Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Movies in this overview guide to the subject, brilliant for beginners looking to learn and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Movie Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Movies, with: - More than 100 of the best movies ever made worldwide - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Movie Book is the perfect introduction to the rich history of cinema like never before - from the golden age of black-and-white films to international art-house and 21st-century sci-fi, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 100 of the best movies ever made, uncovering the key themes and big ideas behind the world's most celebrated cinematic gems. Your Movie Questions, Simply Explained This book brings cinema to life with iconic quotes and film stills, posters, biographies of directors, actors, and actresses, along with narrative timelines and images exploring key themes. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the best cinematic masterpieces, The Movie Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. Learn everything about your favourite movies, as well as celebrated classics and the films to watch before you die, through iconic quotes and stills, posters, biographies, memorabilia and narrative timelines, through superb mind maps and step-by-step summaries. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Movie Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Michael Rubbo's groundbreaking work has had a deep and enduring impact on documentary filmmaking worldwide, though his name has remained relatively unknown. In The Documentary Art of Michael Rubbo, author D.B. Jones traces Rubbo's filmmaking from his days as a film student at Stanford, through his twenty years at the National Film Board of Canada, where Rubbo developed his distinct documentary style. Jones then describes Rubbo's post-NFB venture into feature film directing, followed by Rubbo's return to his native Australia, first as an executive with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and later as a director of feature-length documentaries and maker of short, personal films for YouTube. Exploring locales from Montreal to Vietnam, topics as diverse as plastic surgery and French Marxism, and from interviewing Margaret Atwood to documenting a failed attempt to interview Fidel Castro, Rubbo's wide-ranging work establishes his innovative, personal, lyric, and spontaneous documentary style. In The Documentary Art of Michael Rubbo D.B. Jones reveals not only the depth of meaning in Rubbo's films, but also the depth of their influence on filmmaking itself.

This biography of Alfred Hitchcock is as intriguing, revealing, perverse, and entertaining as any of his classic films. 'The best book yet about the movies' most famous director' Publisher's Weekly 'No one will ever top Hitch' Jimmy Stewart One of cinema's greatest directors, a virtuoso visual artist, and a genius of the suspense genre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) is universally known for such masterpieces as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. But he was also a famously difficult and complex man, prone to arguing with studios and stars alike. In writing this biography, John Russell Taylor, a distinguished film critic and friend of Hitchcock's, enjoyed his full cooperation. Based on numerous interviews, with photos from the private family albums, and an in-depth study of the making of his last film, this biography of the director is as intriguing, revealing, perverse, and entertaining as any Hitchcock classic.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. In Hitchcock's Appetites, Casey McKittrick offers the first book-length study of the relationship between Hitchcock's body size and his cinema. Whereas most critics and biographers of the great director are content to consign his large figure and larger appetite to colorful anecdotes of his private life, McKittrick argues that our understanding of Hitchcock's films, his creative process, and his artistic mind are incomplete without considering his lived experience as a fat man. Using archival research of his publicity, script collaboration, and personal communications with his producers, in tandem with close textual readings of his films, feminist critique, and theories of embodiment, Hitchcock's Appetites produces a new and compelling profile of Hitchcock's creative life, and a fuller, more nuanced account of his auteurism.

In Japan and much of Europe, Ozu is widely considered to be one of the finest film directors who ever lived. While Ozu has a strong reputation in the West, his films are not as well-known or widely appreciated in the U.S. as they are elsewhere. A notable exception to this trend is film critic Roger Ebert, who recently wrote that Ozu is one of his "three or four" favorite directors. Also, moving beyond the view that Tokyo Story is a masterful exception in the Ozu canon, Ebert sees Ozu's films as "nearly always of the same high quality." Ozu International will reflect on Ebert's view of Ozu by arguing that this director deserves broader recognition in the U.S., and that his entire canon is worthy of serious study. With the recent release of more than 15 Ozu DVDs in the Criterion Collection, covering every phase of his career at least in part (including silent films, black-and-white talkies, and color films), Ozu International helps to fill a lingering gap in English-language scholarship on Ozu by giving this new generation of scholars a book-length forum to explore new critical perspectives on an unfairly neglected director. Contributions include specialists in Japanese culture, academics from a range of disciplines, and professional films critics.

The Apu Trilogy is the fourth directorial monograph written by influential film critic Robin Wood and republished for a contemporary audience. Focusing on the famed trilogy from Indian director Satyajit Ray, Wood persuasively demonstrates his ability at detailed textual analysis, providing an impressively sustained reading that elucidates the complex view of life in the trilogy. Wood was one of our most insightful and committed film critics, championing films that explore the human condition. His analysis of The Apu Trilogy reveals and illuminates the films' profoundly humanistic qualities with clarity and rigor, plumbing the psychological and emotional resonances that arise from Ray's delicate balance of performance, camerawork, and visual design. Wood was the first English language critic to write substantively about Ray's films, which made the original publication of his monograph on The Apu Trilogy unprecedented as well as impressive. Of late there has been a renewed interest in North America in the work of Satyajit Ray, yet no other critic has come close to equaling the scope and depth of Wood's analysis. In his introduction, originally published in 1971, Wood says Ray's work was met with indifference. In response, he offers possible reasons why this occurred, including social and cultural differences and the films' slow pacing, which contemporary critics tended to associate with classical cinema. Wood notes Ray's admiration for Western film culture, including the Hollywood cinema and European directors, particularly Jean Renoir and his realist films. Assigning a chapter to each Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and The World of Apu (1959), Wood goes on to explore each film more thoroughly. One of the aspects of this book that is particularly rewarding is Wood's analytical approach to the trilogy as a whole, as well as detailed attention given to each of the three films. The book, with a new preface by Richard Lippe and foreword by Barry Keith Grant, functions as a masterclass on what constitutes an in-depth reading of a work and the use of critical tools that are relevant to such a task. Robin Wood's The Apu Trilogy offers an excellent account of evaluative criticism that will appeal to film scholars and students alike.