The newest volume in the Film Theory in Practice Series, Auteur Theory and My Son John offers a concise introduction to authorship and auteur theory in jargon-free language. The book goes on to show this theory can be deployed to interpret Leo McCarey's notorious but undervalued film My Son John, which critics deemed a clear-cut failure, and the auteurists declared a masterpiece. James Morrison traces the development of auteur theory through its emergence in the pages of the French film journal Cahiers du cinema and the complex permutations it undergoes subsequently. This history will help students and scholars who are eager to learn more about this important area of film theory. The analysis of My Son John shows how auteur theory enables modes of interpretation and discovers levels of meaning otherwise unavailable.

Brian De Palma is perhaps best known as the director behind the gangster classic Scarface. Yet as ingrained as Scarface is in American popular culture, it is but one of a sizeable number of controversial films-many of which are consistently misread or ignored-directed by De Palma over his more than four-decade career. In Un-American Psycho, Chris Dumas places De Palma's body of work in dialogue with the works of other provocative filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Francis Ford Coppola with the aim of providing a broader understanding of the narrative, stylistic, and political gestures that characterize De Palma's filmmaking. De Palma's films engage with a wide range of issues surrounding American political and social culture, and this volume offers a rethinking of the received wisdom on his work.

James Naremore's study of Max Ophuls' classic 1948 melodrama, Letter from an Unknown Woman, not only pays tribute to Ophuls but also discusses the backgrounds and typical styles of the film's many contributors--among them Viennese author Stephan Zweig, whose 1922 novella was the source of the picture; producer John Houseman, an ally of Ophuls who nevertheless made questionable changes to what Ophuls had shot; screenwriter Howard Koch; music composer Daniele Amfitheatrof; designers Alexander Golitzen and Travis Banton; and leading actors Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan, whose performances were central to the film's emotional effect. Naremore also traces the film's reception history, from its middling box office success and mixed early reviews, exploring why it has been a work of exceptional interest to subsequent generations of both aesthetic critics and feminist theorists. Lastly, Naremore provides an in-depth critical appreciation of the film, offering nuanced appreciation of specific details of mise-en-scene, camera movement, design, sound, and performances, integrating this close analyses into an overarching analysis of Letter's "recognition plot;" a trope in which the recognition of a character's identity creates dramatic intensity or crisis. Naremore argues that Letter's use of recognition is one of the most powerful in Hollywood cinema, and contrasts it with what we find in Zweig's novella.

Theatre and film director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987) is known chiefly as a technical innovator and stylist. His stage credits include the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (1935), and Oklahoma (1943); his sixteen completed films include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Golden Boy (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and Silk Stockings (1957). In the theatre, Mamoulian integrated the various contributory arts of the American musical, transforming the near variety-show format of musicals into a dramatic unity of plot, character, music, and dance. He thus opened the stage to what would later be termed the "golden age" of the American book musical of the 1950s and 60s. In early sound films, Mamoulian restored mobility to the camera, rediscovered montage, redefined close-ups, split-screen, and dissolves, invented the voice-over, and was first to use multitrack sound recording. He directed the first live-action Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935). Spergel introduces previously undisclosed personal documents about the Mamoulian that necessitate a re-examination of Mamoulian's own statements about his life. He shows that the central theme in Mamoulian's art and life, as he describes it to overcome the world and embrace truth extended to the telling of his own history. Mamoulian believed he could alter that history through stylized presentation, idealizing the truth, and thereby raising numerous questions about historiography in general.

A new approach to a director whose contribution to cinema is often overshadowed his personal life, "Polanski and Perception" focuses on Roman Polanski's interest in the nature of perception and how this is manifested in his films. The incorporation of cognitive research into film theory is becoming increasingly widespread, with novel cinematic technologies and recent developments in digital projection making a strong grasp of perceptual psychology critical to fostering cognitive engagement.Informed by the work of neuropsychologist R. L. Gregory, this volume focuses primarily on two sets of films: the Apartment trilogyof "Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, " and "The Tenant"; and the Investigation trilogy of "Chinatown, Frantic, "and "The Ninth Gate." Also included are case studies of "Knife in the Water, Death and the Maiden, " and "The Ghost.""Polanski and Perception" presents a highly original and engaging new look at the work of this influential filmmaker.

Clive Barker: Dark imaginer explores the diverse literary, film and visionary creations of the polymathic and influential British artist Clive Barker. In this necessary and timely collection, innovative essays by leading scholars in the fields of literature, film and popular culture explore Barker's contribution to gothic, fantasy and horror studies, interrogating his creative legacy. The volume consists of an extensive introduction and twelve groundbreaking essays that critically reevaluate Barker's oeuvre. These include in-depth analyses of his celebrated and lesser known novels, short stories, theme park designs, screen and comic book adaptations, film direction and production, sketches and book illustrations, as well as responses to his material from critics and fan communities. Clive Barker: Dark imaginer reveals the breadth and depth of Barker's distinctive dark vision, which continues to fascinate and flourish. -- .

Wes Anderson is one of the most influential voices from the past two decades of American cinema. A true auteur, Anderson is known for the visual artistry, inimitable tone, and idiosyncratic characterizations that make each of his films--"Bottle Rocket," "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," "The Darjeeling Limited," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," and "Moonrise Kingdom"--instantly recognizable as "Andersonian." "The Wes Anderson Collection "is the first in-depth overview of Anderson's filmography, guiding readers through his life and career. Previously unpublished photos, artwork, and ephemera complement a book-length conversation between Anderson and award-winning critic Matt Zoller Seitz. The interview and images are woven together in a meticulously designed book that captures the spirit of his films: melancholy and playful, wise and childish--and thoroughly original.
Praise for "The Wes Anderson Collection: "
"In "The Wes Anderson Collection," Seitz expands a series of video essays on Anderson's influences, illuminating as much of Anderson's process as possible in a massive, beautifully rendered volume. Although it looks (and sometimes reads) like a coffee table book, "The Wes Anderson Collection" brings together style and substance to provide a loving homage to Anderson's films and moviemaking in general."" --The A.V. Club "
"Your coffee table wants--no, scratch that--needs this book . . . Packed with 400 images of everything from behind-the-scenes set shots to makeup inspiration to hand-drawn storyboards, the massive tome is pure eye candy. But in addition to the visuals, Seitz also dives deep into each and every Anderson film." --"NYLON"
"A magical tour of Wes Anderson's filmography." --"C" magazine
"Each page of this book--filled with conversations, photographs and artwork surrounding each film--showcases Anderson's pop-culture inspirations from Hitchcock and Star Wars to Jacques Cousteau and the French New Wave. Better than most of their kind, the talks reveal a candidness and honesty between critic and director, allowing Seitz to dig around Anderson's vault and share his discoveries." --"FILTER"
""The Wes Anderson Collection" comes as close as a book can to reading like a Wes Anderson film. The design is meticulously crafted, with gorgeous full-page photos and touches like a still representation of Rushmore's opening montage." --"The A.V. Club"
"Reading the book, you feel as if you're disappearing into the miniature world of Anderson's movies, like you're playing around in the files and fastidiously kept dossiers assembled for each project. In this way, the book mimics the work." --Complex.com
"It's smart, informative, and looks beautiful. In other words, it's the perfect gift." --"Complex "magazine

Luis Bunuel was one of the great film-makers of the twentieth century. Gwynne Edwards analyses his work in the context of Bunuel's personal obsessions - sex, bourgeois values and religion. Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) was one of the truly great film-makers of the twentieth century. Shaped by a repressive Jesuit education and a bourgeois family background, he reacted against both, escaped to Paris, and was soon embraced by Andre Breton's official surrealist group. His early films are his most aggressive and shocking, the slicing of the eyeball in Un Chien andalou (1929) one of the most memorable episodes in the history of cinema. The Forgotten Ones (1950) and He (1952), made in Mexico, were followed, from 1960, in Spain and France, by the films for which he is best known: Viridiana (1961), Belle de jour (1966), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Gwynne Edwards analyses the films in the context of Bunuel's personal obsessions - sex, bourgeois values, and religion - suggesting that the film-maker experienced a degree of sexual inhibition surprising in a surrealist. GWYNNE EDWARDS is Professor of Spanish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

The great director John Ford (1894-1973) is best known for classic westerns, but his body of work encompasses much more than this single genre. Jeffrey Richards develops and broadens our understanding of Ford's film-making oeuvre by studying his non-Western films through the lens of Ford's life and abiding preoccupations. Ford's other cinematic worlds included Ireland, the Family, Catholicism, War and the Sea, which share with his westerns the recurrent themes of memory and loss, the plight of outsiders and the tragedy of family breakup. Richards' revisionist study both provides new insights into familiar films such as The Fugitive (1947); The Quiet Man (1952), Gideon's Way and The Informer (1935) and reclaims neglected masterpieces, among them Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and the extraordinary The Long Voyage Home. (1940).

A unique document: Clint Eastwood's story, as told in his own words A reference work in which one of the great masters of contemporary cinema revisits, film by film, his entire career as both a legendary actor and a remarkable director An insightful conversation with the critic and documentary filmmaker Michael Henry Wilson, who has known Eastwood for over twenty years A richly illustrated, faithful record of Eastwood's work, containing film stills and set photographs as well as previously unpublished photographs from his personal collection, dating from his youth and early years as an actor A potential 2010 bestseller: Eastwood's recent films - including Million Dollar Baby (2004), Gran Torino (2008), Changeling (2008) and Invictus (2009) - have enjoyed huge worldwide success, both at the box office and with the critics Includes a biography and a complete filmography

If you were first exposed to television as a child in the early 1950s when your parents bought their first set, you probably saw the words "directed by Paul Landres" on the screen several times a week. His name became familiar by sheer repetition on the end credits of episode after episode of what youngsters were watching in those days: The Cisco Kid, Boston Blackie, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, Cowboy G-Men, and Ramar of the Jungle. Francis M. Nevins grew to know Landres' name then, and later in his life when he watched other series directed by him Westerns including The Rifleman and Bonanza and detective shows like 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye. Nevins had the pleasure of later meeting Paul Landres and was able to tap into his memories, insights, and professional knowledge to create this enjoyable biographical account. This book is organized as a sort of prose documentary, with Landres' reminiscences interspersed with Nevin's own narration. Includes photos and a filmography.

A key figure in early avant-garde cinema, Walter Ruttmann was a pioneer of experimental animation and the creative force behind one of the silent era's most celebrated montage films, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Yet even as he was making experimental films, Ruttmann had a day job. He worked regularly in advertising -and he would go on to make industrial films, medical films, and even Nazi propaganda films. Michael Cowan offers here the first study of Ruttmann in English, not only shedding light on his commercial, industrial, and propaganda work, but also rethinking his significance in light of recent transformations in film studies. Cowan brilliantly teases out the linkages between the avant-garde and industrial society in the early twentieth century, showing how Ruttmann's films incorporated and enacted strategies for managing the multiplicities of mass society. This book has won the Willy Haas Award 2014 for its outstanding contribution to the study of German cinema.

This original collection fills a gap in the literature on Lav Diaz, and more broadly, on slow and durational cinema. The importance of the director in contemporary world cinema is beyond doubt. This collection considers Lav Diaz and his works holistically without being confined to a specific approach or research method. On the contrary, it involves almost all the major contemporary academic approaches to cinema. It focuses on an auteur who has been celebrated immensely in recent times and yet has remained largely unexplored in cinema studies. The book will address this research gap. As such, this book aims to situate Diaz at the crucial juncture of 'new' auteurism, Filipino New Wave and transnational cinema, but it does not neglect the industrial-exhibitional coordinates of his cinema. The rationale behind this project is to raise questions on the oeuvre of a significant auteur, to situate him in and outside of his immediate national context(s), to present a repository of critical approaches on him, to reconsider the existing critical positions on him, to find newer avenues to enter (and exit) his canon that will consciously avoid the time-worn rhetoric of long take and slowness of the proverbial 'slow cinema' camp and to find corridors in him that will lead to informed ways of reaching other movements/auteurs in other times, other places. It explores various other aspects of Diaz and his cinema whose notoriety, the editors believe, should not rely solely on its incredible running time. The collection looks at Diaz from the perspectives of a national and a transnational critic - one of the two editors is from the Philippines, the other from another Asian location. It concentrates both on the spatial and the temporal, to place him within the intricacies of the culture and creative industries and the distribution practices and politics in his native place, to allow space for his 'detractors' who (perhaps rightly) focus on and object to his 'artlessness', and also to read him in the context of his fascination for the epic novel and novelistic cinema, his engagement with Dostoevsky and Jose Rizal, among others. This is the first book-length study on the Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. It looks critically at his career and corpus from various perspectives, with contributions from cinema studies researchers, film critics, festival programmers and artists. It offers a nuanced overview of the filmmaker and the cinematic traditions he belongs to for film enthusiasts, researchers and general readers alike. Primary readership will be researchers, scholars, educators and students in film studies. Also academics and researchers interested and working in cultural studies and Philippine studies.

Over nearly sixty years, Agnes Varda (b. 1928) has given interviews that are revealing not only of her work, but of her remarkably ambiguous status. She has been called the ""Mother of the New Wave"" but suffered for many years for never having been completely accepted by the cinematic establishment in France. Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), displayed many of the characteristics of the two later films that launched the New Wave, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless. In a low-budget film, using (as yet) unknown actors and working entirely outside the prevailing studio system, Varda completely abandoned the ""tradition of quality"" that Truffaut was at that very time condemning in the pages of Cahiers du cinema. Her work, however, was not ""discovered"" until after Truffaut and Godard had broken onto the scene in 1959. Varda's next film, Cleo from 5 to 7, attracted considerably more attention and was selected as France's official entry for the Festival in Cannes. Ultimately, however, this film and her work for the next fifty years continued to be overshadowed by her more famous male friends, many of whom she mentored and advised. Her films have finally earned recognition as deeply probing and fundamental to the growing awareness in France of women's issues and the role of women in the cinema. ""I'm not philosophical,"" she says, ""not metaphysical. Feelings are the ground on which people can be led to think about things. I try to show everything that happens in such a way and ask questions so as to leave the viewers free to make their own judgments."" The panoply of interviews here emphasize her core belief that ""we never stop learning"" and reveal the wealth of ways to answer her questions.

Luis Bunuel: A Life in Letters provides access for the first time to an annotated English-language version of around 750 of the most important and most widely relevant of these letters. Bunuel (1900-1983) came to international attention with his first films, Un Chien Andalou (with Dali, 1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930): two surprisingly avant-garde productions that established his position as the undisputed master of Surrealist filmmaking. He went on to make 30 full-length features in France, the US and Mexico, and consolidated his international reputation with a Palme d'Or for Viridiana in 1961, and an Academy Award in 1973 for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. He corresponded with some of the most famous writers, directors, actors and artists of his generation and the list of these correspondents reads like a roll call of major twentieth-century cultural icons: Fellini, Truffaut, Vigo, Aragon, Dali, Unik - and yet none of this material has been accessible outside specialist archives and a very small number of publications in Spanish and French.

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda is arguably Japan's greatest living director with an international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and compassionate eye.The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will gain a special understanding of Kore-eda's films through a novel connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese traditional aesthetics.An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda's oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns, despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own lives.

This book interrogates the various manifestations of rival systems of justice in the plays and films of Martin McDonagh, in analysis informed by the critical writings of Michael J. Sandel, Steven Pinker, Julia Kristeva, and in particular Amartya Sen on violence, justice, equality and the law. In McDonagh's works, failures to investigate adequately criminal actions are matched by multiple forced confessions and umpteen miscarriages of justice. The author explores McDonagh's creative worlds as ones where distinctions between victim and perpetrator and guilt and innocence are precarious, where the burden of truth seldom reaches the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt and where the punishments and rewards of justice are applied randomly. This project considers the abject nature of justice in McDonagh's writing, with the vast implications of justice being fragile, suspect, piecemeal, deviant, haphazard and random. Tentative forms of justice are tempered and then threatened by provocative, anarchic and abject humour. As the author argues, McDonagh's writing cleverly circulates rival, incompatible and comparative systems of justice in order to substantiate the necessities and virtues of justice.

Updated collections of recent interviews with filmmakers whose works represent trends in the film industries of Central Asia and the Middle East, these two new geospecific editions expand upon the earlier volume "Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia." Following an introduction delineating the histories of the film industries of the countries that make up the Middle East and Central Asia--including Iran, Turkey, and the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--both books contain interviews stretching over a decade, which position the filmmakers and their creative concerns within the social or political context of their respective countries. The striking variety of approaches toward each interview creates a rich diversity of tone and opens the door to a better understanding of images of "otherness" in film. In addition to transcripts of the interviews, each chapter also includes stills from important films discussed, biographical information about the filmmakers, and filmographies of their works. Gonul Donmez-Colin offers in these expanded editions a carefully researched and richly detailed firsthand account of the developments and trends in these regional film industries that is sure to be appreciated by film scholars and researchers of the Middle East and Central Asia.

Aleksandar Sasa Petrovic (1929-1994) was one of the most significant filmmakers to come out of Socialist Yugoslavia. He was by far the most awarded director on a national level, winning three Golden Arenas at the Yugoslav Film Festival in Pula, as well as receiving all the highest state awards. He was also acclaimed internationally, and the first Yugoslav director to win prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1967, as well as Oscar nominations in 1967 and 1968. His film, I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), was seen by 200,000 people in Paris alone, and was extensively distributed worldwide. The author has defined four themes that have, particularly in Petrovic's mature work, consistently provided a sharp and thorough commentary on political life and its contradictions. Petrovic regularly investigated: (a) interethnic relationships, and/or the position of ethnic minorities (b) the position of religion in society (or societies) (c) the relationships between political establishments and non-privileged (or marginal) groups in society (or societies) (d) the dogmatic nature of ideologies and/or religions. As Petrovic scrutinised these themes, he introduced a specific anti-dogmatic position of his own, which permeates his later films. This position became a significant element of his authorial signature - if one admits a continuing concern for notions of authorship.

Lars von Trier built a reputation as a provocateur from the start-but in the late 2000s, he entered an even more inflammatory phase. Amid Cannes controversies, Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013-14), and The House That Jack Built (2018) brandished the cinematic virtuosity von Trier once banned under the Dogme 95 Manifesto while subjecting audiences to "extreme" cinema. Following von Trier's experience of clinical depression in 2006 and 2007, these films took an aggressively personal and retrospective turn against the backdrop of the director's controversy-courting public appearances. Playing against widespread assumptions, Linda Badley takes a reparative approach, offering an in-depth examination of these four films and the contexts that produced them. Drawing on numerous interviews with the director and his collaborators as well as inside access to archival materials, she provides a thorough and comprehensive account of von Trier's preproduction and creative process. Highlighting a transmedial turn, Badley tracks von Trier's artistic touchstones from Wagner, Proust, and the Marquis de Sade to Scandinavian erotic cinema and serial killer genre tropes. She considers his portrayals of mental illness and therapy, gender and sexuality, nature and extinction, shedding light on the thematic concerns that unite these films as a distinct cycle. Offering nuanced readings of these films, the book emphasizes the significance of von Trier's work for current critical and philosophical debates, showing how they engage with notions of the Anthropocene, "dark ecology," and the postcinematic.

Shyam Benegal is an Indian director and screenwriter whose work is considered central to New Indian cinema. By closely analysing several of Benegal s films, this book provides an understanding of India s post-independence history.

The book examines the filmmaker s focus on women by highlighting his subtle and critical engagement with a truism of Indian nationalism: women s centrality to the (nation-) state s negotiation with modernity. It looks at the importance Benegal accords to history its little known, contested, or iconic events and figures in crafting national culture and identities, and goes on to discuss the filmmaker s nuanced representation of the developmental agendas of the nation-state. The book presents an account of the relationship of historical film and fiction to official history, and provides a fuller understanding of Indian cinema, and how it is shaped by as well as itself shapes national imperatives.

Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers an analysis of cinematic treatment of post-independence narratives and gives important insights into the imagination of the time. It is a useful contribution for students and scholars of Film Studies, South Asian History and South Asian Culture.

Over the course of his illustrious forty-year career, the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) created a cinematic universe that continues to enthrall film aficionados and influence other directors. From the bellowing strongman in "La Strada" (1954) to the anguished society reporter in "La Dolce Vita" (1960) and the tyrannical whip-wielding director in "81/2" (1963), the inhabitants of this universe have risen to the level of archetype. Their creator, though, looms even larger in the cinematic imagination. This lushly illustrated volume harnesses the power of images to evoke the physical and imaginative worlds that "he" inhabited.
"Fellini" traces the director's sources, themes, and obsessions through movie stills, drawings, posters, photos, and other archival material. Many of the images show him on set, working behind the camera or collaborating with actors, costume designers, and others. One group of previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photos offers a new perspective on the fantasy world of Cinecitta, the studio where Fellini made many of his films. Another notable set of images presents the director's "Book of Dreams," in which he recorded his dreams in words and drawings.
Illuminating Fellini's unique take on twentieth-century culture and mass media, these striking documents combine to reveal the essential power of his work. Twenty years after Fellini's death, "Fellini" adds a new dimension to our understanding of a visual and thematic universe that had a profound impact on the development of film as an art form--and on the imaginations of so many viewers.

Gilles Deleuze represents the most widely referenced theorist of cinema today. And yet, even the most rudimentary pillars of his thought remain mysterious to most students (and even many scholars) of film studies. From one of the foremost theorists following Deleuze in the world today, Deleuze and Lola Montes offers a detailed explication of Gilles Deleuze's writings on film - from his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985). Building on this foundation, Rushton provides an interpretation of Max Ophuls's classic film Lola Montes as an example of how Deleuzian film theory can function in the practice of film interpretation.