Terence Fisher is best known as the director who made most of the classic Hammer horrors - including The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Devil Rides Out. But there is more to Terence Fisher than Hammer horror. In a busy twenty-five year career, he directed fifty films, not just horrors but also thrillers, comedies, melodramas, and science-fiction. This book offers an appreciation of all of Fisher's films and also gives a sense of his place in British film history. Fisher was a film-maker who spent most of his career working in the low-budget sector of British cinema, largely unnoticed by critics and possessing little control over the projects he was assigned. That he managed to fashion something distinctive from such limited resources is a testament to his considerable abilities as a film-maker, abilities which proved invaluable in the development of Hammer horror in the late 1950s. Looking at Fisher's career as a whole not only underlines his importance as a film-maker but also casts a new, interesting light on the areas in which he worked - Gainsborough melodrama, the 1950s B film, 1960s science-fiction and, of course, Hammer, one of the most successful independent film companies in the history of British cinema.

Movies are often examined for subtext and dramatizations of social and psychological issues as well as current movements. Studies of well-known Catholic directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, have made the search for Catholic themes a reputable field of examination. Through a Catholic Lens continues the search for these themes and examines the Catholic undercurrents by studying nineteen film directors from around the world. Although these directors may or may not be practicing Catholics, their Catholic background can be found in their writing and directing. Each chapter, written by a different contributor, analyzes one film of each director for its Catholic motifs. With the recent increase of cinema studies, this collection will be of interest to students and academics as well as cinema buffs.

This book provides an in-depth and intimate study of the cinema of Muhammad Malas. One of the well-known auteurs of Arab and Syrian cinema, Malas's distinctive cinematic project has always confronted the social and political issues of his time. From feature films Dreams of the City, The Night, Bab al Maqam (Passion), and Ladder to Damascus to documentaries such as The Dream and Aleppo: Maqamat of Pleasure, Malas's films challenge and explore Arab culture and history. Archival images run through the chapters of this book which combines insightful interviews with excerpts from Malas's literary works and critical explorations of his cinematic style and thematic concerns. The book concludes with Malas's own words, sharing the treatment of his film project Cinema al-Dunya.

'I give this as a present more than other book. I buy it for people so often that I’ve been known to give girlfriends two copies, one birthday after another’ - Dolly Alderton

Now with an introduction from Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love, revealing how a new generation of women can take inspiration from Nora’s sharp wit and wisdom about life.

* Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.

* If the shoe doesn't fit in the shoe store, it's never going to fit.

* When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

* If only one third of your clothes are mistakes, you're ahead of the game.

* Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for by the age of forty-five.

A brilliant approach to the queerness of one of Taiwan's greatest auteurs A critical figure in queer Sinophone cinema-and the first director ever commissioned to create a film for the permanent collection of the Louvre-Tsai Ming-liang is a major force in Taiwan cinema and global moving image art. Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy offers a fascinating, systematic method for analyzing the queerness of Tsai's films. Nicholas de Villiers argues that Tsai expands and revises the notion of queerness by engaging with the sexuality of characters who are migrants, tourists, diasporic, or otherwise displaced. Through their lack of fixed identities, these characters offer a clear challenge to the binary division between heterosexuality and homosexuality, as well as the Orientalist binary division of Asia versus the West. Ultimately, de Villiers explores how Tsai's films help us understand queerness in terms of spatial, temporal, and sexual disorientation. Conceiving of Tsai's cinema as an intertextual network, Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy makes an important addition to scholarly work on Tsai in English. It draws on extensive interviews with the director, while also offering a complete reappraisal of Tsai's body of work. Contributing to queer film theory and the aesthetics of displacement, Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy reveals striking connections between sexuality, space, and cinema.

"Looking for Alfred" documents Johan Grimonprez's prize-winning film of the same name, an homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the form of a search for the perfect Hitchcock doppelganger and vignettes starring those multiple would-be Hitchcocks, reenacting his cameos. Casting calls and screen tests in London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York are documented in film stills and photos. (Professional Hitchcock impersonator Rob Burrage says, "I thought I was safe until you guys came along, digging up all those other Hitchcock look-alikes. Now we will have to find ways of disposing of them.") Line-readings from Truffaut's famous 1960s interview with the master and scenes in which Hitchcock acted as an extra are further grist for the mill. Beyond the work's mockumentary structure, Grimonprez evokes the Hitchcockian universe uncannily, and connects back--through the recurring motif of a man in a suit and a bowler hat--to another great modern auteur, Rene Magritte.

This book traces the development of Richard Linklater's Boyhood from its audacious concept through its tenacious production to its celebrated reception, placing it within the context of cinematic parables about children to demonstrate its distinctive vision. Timothy Shary, author of numerous studies on the history of teen cinema, evaluates the film's many messages about youth and adolescence within the context of early twenty-first century American culture, illuminating how Linklater's singular vision of the otherwise ordinary life of a boy reveals potent universal truths about all people.

"Directors and Designers "explores the practice of scenography--the creation of perspective in the design and painting of stage scenery--and offers new insight into the working relationships of the people responsible for these theatrical transformations. With contributions from leading practitioners and theorists, editor Christine White describes the way in which the roles of director and designer have developed over time. Featuring chapters on theater and site-specific performance, theatrical communication and aesthetics, and the cognitive reception of design by the audience, this volume provides a valuable resource on current approaches to scenography for professionals and students.

Alfred Hitchcock's career spanned more than five decades, during which he directed more than 50 films, many of them indisputable classics: Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho, among others. In A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense, authors Jim McDevitt and Eric San Juan provide a comprehensive examination of Hitchcock's film-to-film development, spanning from the beginning of his career in silents to his final film in 1976, including his work on two French propaganda shorts he directed during World War II and segments he directed for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Organized into 52 chapters and arranged in chronological order, the book invites readers to spend a year with the director's most notable works, all of which are available on DVD. Each film is examined in the context of Hitchcock's career, as the authors consider the themes central to his work; discuss each film's production; comment on the cast, script, and other aspects of the film; and assess the film's value to the Hitchcock viewer. From The Lodger to Family Plot, 68 works directed by Hitchcock are analyzed. Each analysis is supplemented by key film facts, trivia, awards, a guide to his cameos, a filmography, and a listing of available DVD releases. Whether readers decide to undertake the journey through his films one week at a time or pick and choose at their discretion, A Year of Hitchcock will open the eyes of any viewer who wants to better understand this director's evolution as an artist.

Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini's ""trilogy of life,"" a series of three cinematic adaptations of medieval texts, includes ""The Decameron"" (1970), ""The Canterbury Tales"" (1971) and ""Arabian Nights"" (1973). Much more than simple retellings, the films demonstrate a modern auteur's purposefully idealized and stylized vision of the period, and each uniquely comments on narrativity within the texts. In ""The Decameron"" and ""The Canterbury Tales"", Pasolini himself plays the artist Giotto and Geoffrey Chaucer, respectively, affording him positions of considerable narrative power in the films. As Giotto suggests at the end of ""The Decameron"", Pasolini's films dream the original texts, offering his own poetic visualization, in a way that is meant to revive the reading of his sources through irreverent cinematic homage. This book explores Pasolini's visualized narrative in the first two films of the trilogy, showing how film becomes an alternative form of storytelling that allows auteurs like Pasolini to adapt, in varying degrees of faith, classic sources while displaying new artistic visions. The book first studies the two films in detail and puts them in perspective within the trilogy. Next, it interprets both films from a wider perspective, recounting misinterpretations, expounding upon Pasolini's ideological vision, and defending the oft-criticized adaptations. Finally, the conclusion discusses how the films represent innovation over strict adaptation, and considers the paradox of rendering, non-realistically, the essence of original works. Appendices offer charts with information on the narrative structures of the films and the correspondences between them. A bibliography and a Pasolini filmography are included.

Ridgeway (Reggie) Callow began his film career in the early 1930s and for four decades worked as an assistant director on some of the most memorable films in Hollywood history. In the early 1970s, over a period of several months, film historian Rudy Behlmer conducted interviews with Callow, and the result is this edited version of many hours of relatively informal conversations recorded between the two men. In these extracts, Callow recounts what it was like to work on such celebrated films as Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Sound of Music, recalling the work of filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes, David O. Selznick, Michael Curtiz, John Huston, Carol Reed, Lewis Milestone, and Robert Wise. Callow also provides first-hand knowledge and inside information about stars of the period, including Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Grace Kelly, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Julie Andrews, and others. Callow does not romanticize the glamour of Hollywood or echo carefully nurtured myths of legendary pioneer creative figures but rather recounts the workaday world of film business with revelations about major productions and personalities.

Richard Bare is primarily known as the sole director of the television series Green Acres, but his Hollywood career spanned over 40 years, starting with his USC student film, So You Want to Give Up Smoking, which resulted in a long-term contract at Warner Bros. He has directed over a dozen feature films and over 400 television shows, including Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Virginian, and the Twilight Zone. Follow Bare through his many years in the film industry, which brought him into contact with Hollywood's biggest stars, like Gary Cooper, Betty Hutton, Debbie Reynolds, Eva Gabor, Eddie Albert, and Charlie Chaplin, as well as producers Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Walt Disney. Bare opens with a gripping story of how he and the crew of MGM's The Islanders almost lost their lives in a devastating plane crash in the Caribbean Sea. Includes filmography.

In The Construction of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and Its Outtakes, editors Erin McGlothlin, Brad Prager, and Markus Zisselsberger gather contributions on how Shoah (1985) fundamentally changed the nature and use of filmed testimony and laid the groundwork for how historians and documentarians regard and understand the history of the Holocaust. Critics have taken long note of Shoah's innovative style and its place in the history of documentary film and in cultural memory, but few scholars have touched on its extensive outtakes and the reams of documentation archived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at Yad Vashem, or the release of five feature-length documentaries based on the material in those outtakes. The Construction of Testimony, which contains thirteen essays by some of the most notable scholars in Holocaust film studies, reexamines Lanzmann's body of work, his film, and the impact of Shoah through this trove-over 220 hours-of previously unavailable and unexplored footage. Responding to the need for a sustained examination of Lanzmann's impact on historical and filmic approaches to testimony, this volume inaugurates a new era of scholarship, one that takes a critical position vis-a-vis the filmmaker's posturing, stylization, and editorial sleight-of-hand. The volume's contributors engage with a range of dimensions central to Lanzmann's filmography and the outtakes, including the dynamics of gender in his work, his representation of Nazi perpetrators, and complex issues of language and translation. In light of Lanzmann's invention of a radically new form of witnessing and remembrance, Shoah laid the framework for the ways in which subsequent filmmakers have represented the Holocaust cinematically; at the same time, the outtakes complicate this framework by revealing new details about the filmmaker's complex editorial choices. Scholars and students of film studies and Holocaust studies will value this close analysis.

Known for his visual style as well as for his experimentation in virtually every genre of narrative cinema, award-winning director Sidney J. Furie also has the distinction of having made Canada's first ever feature-length fictional film in English, A Dangerous Age (1957). With a body of work that includes The Ipcress File (1965), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and The Entity (1982), he has collaborated with major stars such as Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford, and Michael Caine, and his films have inspired some of Hollywood's most celebrated directors, including Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. In this first biography of the prolific filmmaker, author Daniel Kremer offers a comprehensive look at the director's unique career. Furie pioneered techniques such as improvisation in large-scale film productions, and sometimes shot his films in sequence to develop the characters from the ground up and improve the performers' in-the-moment spontaneity. Not only has Stanley Kubrick acknowledged that Furie's The Boys in Company C (1978) informed and influenced Full Metal Jacket (1987), but Martin Scorsese has said that he considers The Entity to be one of the scariest horror films of all time. However, Furie was often later criticized for accepting lowbrow work, and as a result, little serious study has been devoted to the director. Meticulously researched and enhanced by Kremer's close relationship with the filmmaker, this definitive biography captures the highs and lows of an exceptional but underexamined career, taking readers behind the scenes with a director who was often ahead of his time.

In these eight sparkling biographies, Stan Brakhage brings us into intimate acquaintance with some of America's most influential independent filmmakers. With insight and sharp detail, Brakhage puts the lives and works of these filmic visionaries into personal focus. We meet Jerome Hill, born to inherit railroads and banks but destined to forge his artistic vision into a lasting film statement. And Marie Menken who, against the odds of a miserable and brutal marriage, developed a film aesthetic that revolutionized the very essence of independent filmmaking. Then James Broughton, the inveterate San Franciscan, whose irrepressible sense of whimsy and profound grasp of classical symbols combined to create some of the most vital filmworks of the last four decades; Christopher MacLaine, the "Artaud of North Beach"; Maya Deren, known to independent filmmakers as "the mother of us all"; Sidney Peterson, sophisticated, erudite, shy, the gentleman of the avant-garde film world; and two of Brakhage's most prominent contemporaries, Bruce Conner and Ken Jacobs.

These filmmakers are members of one of the most radical of 20th-century art movements; and yet as radical and individual as they are, their films and their lives are a continuous source of inspiration, not only to young, developing film-artists, but to the makers of commercial movies and videos as well. Brakhage presents them and their work in portraits that are at once critical and anecdotal. One comes away from Film at Wit's End as one leaves an enjoyable, lively evening among friends.

The work of Andrzej Wajda, one of the world's most important filmmakers, shows remarkable cohesion in spite of the wide ranging scope of his films, as this study of his complete output of feature films shows. Not only do his films address crucial historical, social and political issues; the complexity of his work is reinforced by the incorporation of the elements of major film and art movements. It is the reworking of these different elements by Wajda, as the author shows, which give his films their unique visual and aural qualities.

Quentin Tarantino is one of the best-known living American filmmakers in the world, and the story of his career has been the subject of a number of books and articles. But what do his films mean? In this new study, Edward Gallafent does not look at Tarantino's story but at the films themselves. He asks to what extent Tarantino can be seen as a specifically American filmmaker, with the kinds of preoccupations and interests that have formed part of Hollywood's traditions, and also how he explores the expressive possibilities of current cinema. The book concentrates on the main feature films of Tarantino's career so far: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and the two volumes of Kill Bill. Apart from Kill Bill the films are not treated individually, but in terms of some of the subjects that connect them together, such as success and tradition, their notorious deployment of violence, and Tarantino's approach to story-telling: his interest in presenting events out of chronological order. The book also covers adaptations of Tarantino's work, looking at the screenplays of True Romance and Natural Born Killers as well as the films made from them, and compares Tarantino's approach to adapting Elmore Leonard with that of another important American filmmaker, Paul Schrader. The aim of the book is to explore these topics and to take the reader back to what the American critic Robert Warshow called the 'actual, immediate experience of seeing and responding to the movies'. It is designed to appeal both to those who were excited by the films on first seeing them in the cinema and to those taking the opportunity of reconsidering them on the screen or on DVD.

Few other contemporary Hollywood filmmakers fit the category of "genre stylist" as well as Michael Mann, the director of such films as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral, Manhunter, Thief, and Miami Vice. Mann's film style marks him as a director who chooses the iconographic backdrop of a genre as a canvas upon which he and his collaborators can craft a unique cinematic vision. The Cinema of Michael Mann traces the innovative and under-explored stylistic contours of Mann's work, the director's inflection upon and innovation within preexisting genre frameworks, and the relationship of both style and genre to issues of authorship and film criticism. Steven Rybin's critical study of Mann's cinema, and the importance of the filmmaker's themes to our contemporary world, is valuable for both film scholars and cinephiles alike.

The cinematic output of Australian director Peter Weir has garnered numerous awards and widespread critical acclaim - from his early short films of the 1970s to the Hollywood hits he's helmed since 1985, including the likes of Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show and Master and Commander. Drawing on contemporary concepts from transnational cinema studies, this book investigates Weir's entire three-decade career, paying particular attention to his journey from his native Sydney, with its largely auteur-driven national cinema, to the multimillion-dollar Hollywood film industry with its many genre conventions. Along the way, the author explores a host of questions accompanying this move, including Weir's status as a transnational filmmaker and a more generalized discussion of the critically controversial idea of the auteur. Rounding out this volume are interviews with leading Hollywood filmmakers who discuss Weir's work.

In America, few film directors attain the coveted status of auteur. With huge production costs and complex studio systems, it is rare for a single person to gain the level of creative control over all aspects of the filmmaking process -- from screenwriting to editing to the sought-after "final cut" -- that the auteur possesses. Francis Ford Coppola, author Gene Phillips argues, is one of the better known modern exceptions.The force behind such popular and critically acclaimed films as Apocalypse Now and the Godfather trilogy, Coppola has imprinted his distinct style on each of his movies -- and subsequently on the landscape of American popular culture. In Godfather, Phillips argues that Coppola has repeatedly bucked the Hollywood "factory system" in an attempt to create distinct films that reflect his own artistic vision -- often to the detriment of his career and finances.Phillips blends biography, studio history, and film criticism to complete the most comprehensive work on Coppola ever written. Phillips conducted interviews with the director and his colleagues and examined Coppola's production journals and screenplays. Phillips also reviewed rare copies of Coppola's student films, his early excursions into soft-core pornography, and his less celebrated productions such as One from the Heart and Tucker: The Man and His Dream. The result is the definitive assessment of one of Hollywood's most enduring and misunderstood mavericks.

Of all the American filmmakers who emerged from the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939) may be the one most passionately revered by both critics and mainstream audiences.

The "Godfather" and "The Godfather: Part II" are landmark epics whose shots and dialogue sequences have become wholly absorbed by popular culture. "Apocalypse Now," his visionary reworking of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," remains an enduring and controversial template for all future films about the Vietnam War.

Coppola's films featured pivotal roles for such actors as Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, and Harrison Ford and cemented the reputations of Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. His production company, American Zoetrope, helped to launch the careers of directors George Lucas, John Milius, and Carroll Ballard.

"Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews" shows Coppola to be both an intensely personal auteur and a studio-savvy Hollywood player. From the beginning of his career to the present, these conversations reveal him to be brash, candid, sensitive, and willing to engage in heated debate. He reiterates his desire to change the Hollywood system from within and talks openly about the creation of his independent film production company. Featuring interviews conducted by film critics Michael Sragow and Gene D. Phillips and the "New Yorker's" Lillian Ross, among others, the volume shows how Coppola has evolved from hotshot film maverick to elder statesman of American cinema.

Gene D. Phillips, S.J., is a professor of English and film history at Loyola University, Chicago. He is the author of several books on film, including "Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola," and is the editor of "Stanley Kubrick: Interviews" (University Press of Mississippi).

Rodney Hill is a doctoral candidate in theater and film at the University of Kansas, and his work has been published in such periodicals as "Literature/Film Quarterly" and "Post Script." He cowrote with Gene D. Phillips "The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick."

Sergio Leone's renown as a filmmaker rests upon a fistful of films, most notably the three Westerns he made with Clint Eastwood in the mid-1960s: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). While the success of these movies ensured Leone's reputation would endure, the few films he made following The Man with No Name Trilogy culminating in his American gangster epic, Once Upon a Time in America (1984) with Robert DeNiro would solidify Leone's place as one of the great visionaries of his time. In this enhanced revision of Once upon a Time: The Films of Sergio Leone, Robert C. Cumbow examines the work of this Italian filmmaker who made his mark re-envisioning the American Western. This volume includes a greatly expanded introduction and contains newly revised essays in which Cumbow analyzes the transition from "peplum" films to westerns in the Italian popular tradition. The book also examines each of Leone's major films as director, as well as the swan song Italian Western My Name Is Nobody, which Leone co-wrote and guided as producer. Cumbow also studies Leone's compositional style and the influence of Catholicism and the Italian grand opera tradition on his work. He provides a critical evaluation of Leone's style in reshaping the Western genre (and later, the crime film), as well an assessment of the influences on Leone's work, and his continuing impact on subsequent generations of film makers. Additional features of this book include thumbnail comments on the professionals who most frequently made up Leone's cast and crew, as well as an entire chapter devoted to composer Ennio Morricone. The book also includes an exhaustive bibliography, discography, and filmography, completely updated for this new edition. For fans and scholars seeking original and illuminating discussion of his work, The Films of Sergio Leone provides a critical appreciation of this master stylist."

Steven Spielberg has fashioned an enviable career as a writer, producer, and director of American motion pictures, winning Academy Awards for Best Direction (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List), and for Best Film (Schindler's List). With David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg he founded Dreamworks SKG, already one of the most productive and respected studios in Hollywood. Despite Spielberg's notable successes, however, his films have not avoided controversy. The Films of Steven Spielberg provides for the first time a collection of critical writings by professional film critics about the director and his films, bringing together many articles and reviews scattered in often inaccessible specialist publications and professional journals. The opinions vary from complimentary to critical, but they definitely provide a well-rounded view of the films and the director. Twelve of Spielberg's major box office hits, including Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, are discussed in essays that vary in complexity ranging from the heavily theoretical to the more general. This collection of essays, compiled for both film students and professionals in the film industry, attests to the influence of Spielberg and the films that have earned him a significant place in the history of cinema as one of America's most innovative and culturally important filmmakers.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, one of the most respected and acclaimed directors in the history of cinema.. The first monograph on his work to appear in English for many years dealing not only with his thirteen feature-length films but also his little-seen early short Affaires publiques and his short treatise Notes on cinematography.. The films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.. The major critical responses to his work, from the adulatory to the dismissive, are summarized and analyzed.. The work includes a full filmography and a critical bibliography. -- .

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