Edward Eliscu has lived three celebrated lives for much of this century on Broadway, in Hollywood, and in Connecticut. Known among his peers as the exemplary professional lyricist and to many others as a trenchant and witty playwright, screenwriter, performer, director, essayist, critic, poet, and political polemicist, Eliscu is best known to the general public as the writer of such memorable songs as Without a Song, More Than You Know, Great Day, Carioca, and Flying Down to Rio. As a screenwriter he wrote more than twenty films and adapted many prestigious dramatic plays for live television. This memoir is an exciting personal history of an artist with a conscience, his era, and the places he lived.

Although Luis Bunuel, one of the great filmmakers of the century, was notoriously reluctant to discuss his own work in public, he wrote--and wrote well--on many subjects over the years. This collection proceeds chronologically, from poetry and short stories written in Bunuel's youth in Spain to an essay written in 1980, not long before his death. Newly translated into English, the writings offer startling insights into the filmmaker's life and thought.
The earliest pieces came well before Bunuel joined the Surrealist movement in Paris and created the landmark film "Un chien andalou" with Salvador Dali. Yet these and the early Surrealist writings reveal the inventiveness of the mind that would later create such masterpieces of cinema as "L'Age d'or," "Los olvidados," "Viridiana," "The Milky Way," "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," and "That Obscure Object of Desire."
Later writings, which include screenplays and reflections on his own and others' films, illuminate many aspects of Bunuel's career, as well as the ways of thinking and perceiving that underlie his unique cinematic style. The final essay by this extraordinary artist sums up his view of the world--still vibrant and full of contradictions--at the end of his life.

This collection of interviews traces the career of filmmaker Henry Hathaway from his beginnings as a child actor for the American Film Company in 1911 through his directorial triumphs How the West Was Won (1962) and True Grit (1969). Begun as a special project for the American Film Institute, this oral history has now been edited and is being released for the first time in book form. Polly Platt, production designer, screenwriter, and producer of such films as Broadcast News, Pretty Baby, and The War of the Roses conducted the interviews and intended to edit them herself, but her busy career prevented her from completing the project. Now edited for release, this collection contains Hathaway's fascinating reflections about the studio system and working with such Hollywood luminaries as John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley Temple. A must for any Hollywood history buff.

First published on the fiftieth anniversary of his directorial debut, this book is the first to examine the work of a man once hailed as the finest film-maker to emerge from the British studio system after the Second World War. J. Lee Thompson first came to notice as a talented teenage playwright before entering the film business as a scriptwriter. In the unadventurous world of British film-making in the 1950s, he established himself as a controversial figure known for his innovative ideas and public clashes with the Censor. Before being recruited by Hollywood he made a string of classic films including: Yield to the Night (1956), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Tiger Bay (1959), North West Frontier (1959) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). Lee Thompson worked in the Hollywood industry into his late eighties, making nearly thirty films as a director and producer between 1960 and 1990. He remains the best known, however, for his first: the immortal thriller Cape Fear (1962). Drawing on extensive interview material, Steve Chibnall traces Lee Thompson's career in British cinema, and offers an analysis of his films which reveals remarkable, and previously unacknowledged, continuities of style and theme. This is a book for anyone interested in the history of British cinema, and particularly those who enjoy the best of 1950s and 1960s film.

This collection of essays pays tribute to Andrew Sarris, the most influential film critic in American film history. A noted film personality, Sarris occupies a unique position, walking the line between popular journalism and more academic scholarship. He began his career in the 1950s with a passion for film and an eloquent style of prose that led him to become a prominent voice in the film world. As a writer and editor for the Village Voice at its prime, Sarris reached and educated a whole generation of readers, and became respected by academics and critics all over the world. The thirty-eight essays assembled here and arranged according to major themes demonstrate the amazing impact Sarris has had on every aspect of the film world: fellow critics, filmmakers, readers, and American popular culture. Contributors include noted critics Leonard Maltin and Molly Haskell, film scholars David Bordwell and James Naremore, and directors Martin Scorsese, Robert Benton, and John Sayles.

Before being black-listed in the McCarthy era, Bernard Vorhaus was one of Hollywood's most respected silent film writers, working for studios such as Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Not only did he cross paths with some of the brightest lights in early Hollywood Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, D.W. Griffith, John Wayne, Laurence Olivier are some examples but he was a principal influence upon British filmmaker David Lean. Now in his nineties, Vorhaus recounts some of his pioneering work in film in Saved from Oblivion; he was the first director to incorporate subjective flash-backs and to use a sequence before the main titles. Recently, retrospectives of his films, such as Dusty Ermine and The Last Journey, were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, as well as at the National Film Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival in England. This autobiography, replete with insight into the techniques and personas of early cinema, is an important as well as entertaining look at the early history of the medium that shaped the twentieth century. Although Vorhaus did not return to directing after he was prematurely cut from the industry in the wake of McCarthyism, he remembers his years there with nostalgia. "Making films is much more exciting than anything else you can do," he says, and this book proves it.

In Francois Truffaut's opinion The Innocents was 'the best English film after Hitchcock goes to America'. Tennessee Williams said of The Great Gatsby: 'a film whose artistry even surpassed the original novel'. The maker of both films was Jack Clayton, one of the finest English directors of the post-war era and perhaps best remembered for the trail-blazing Room at the Top which brought a new sexual frankness and social realism to the British screen. This is the first full-length critical study of Clayton's work. The author has been able to consult and quote from the director's own private papers which illuminate Clayton's creative practices and artistic intentions. In addition to fresh analyses of the individual films, the book contains new material on Clayton's many unrealised projects and valuably includes his previously unpublished short story 'The Enchantment' - as poignant and revealing as the films themselves. This is a personal and fascinating account of the career and achievement of an important, much-loved director that should appeal to students and film enthusiasts. -- .

An obscure independent filmmaker until Halloween (1978), John Carpenter has been applauded for his classic sense of compositions, yet reviled for his "B-film" sensibility. This second edition of the first book-length analysis finds in Carpenter's films a vision of a profound but unexpected order in the universe. The author analyzes Carpenter's early independent work, his made-for-television movies, his big Hollywood films (The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Stephen King's Christine, Starman), his more recent independent work (Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, They Live), and his contributions to films he did not direct. This edition fully updates the 1990 edition with attention to the films made since that date. With a chronology of Carpenter's career, a detailed filmography, photos, brief plot synopses, and a thorough index, this volume will be treasured by film scholars and fans alike.

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.

Why would you purposefully shoot scenes with no film in your camera? To find the answer, you will need to read this memoir, in which internationally-known Director/Cameraman Bill Gibson recounts some of his most exciting assignments of the past six decades. His career as a combat cameraman propelled him through World War II with the Navy, the Korean Conflict with the Air Force, and to Vietnam as a civilian on assignment with the U.S. Marines. His stories begin with the harrowing retelling of a kamikaze and torpedo attack against the USS Hornet (the Aircraft Carrier that brought the Doolittle Raiders within striking distance of the Japanese homeland) and continue through time and across space, taking the reader on a rollicking ride through history as told through one man's camera. Gibson offers up riots in Indonesia, uprisings in Africa, and coverage of world leaders that reads like a twentieth-century who's who: FDR, Harry Truman, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Charles Lindbergh, Albert Schweitzer, DeGaulle, John F. Kennedy, Reagan, and many others. He also provides insights into the frustrations and triumphs of America's space program, from his vantage point as a consultant to NASA on the photographic coverage of Apollo 11. In No Film in My Camera, Gibson brings all of these scenes to life, not only with his photography, but also with detail and emotion.

In an industry that celebrates extravagance and showmanship, Danish film director Carl Th. Dreyer was a rarity, a man who guarded his privacy fiercely and believed that film provided a way to understand human nature by focusing on the individual person. Best known for his 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc, dominated by its emotionally harrowing close-ups of Joan during her trial, it was Dreyer who pioneered some of the seminal techniques of modern film, techniques that would later be made famous by better known contemporaries such as Sergei Eisenstein and D.W. Griffith. Now, in My Only Great Passion, the first full-length English language biography of Dreyer, Jean and Dale D. Drum restore his reputation to its rightful place. Based on extensive and exclusive interviews with both Dreyer and the people who worked with him-including personal correspondence dating back to 1952-this biography provides the most comprehensive critical examination to date of both Dreyer's life and his approach to filmmaking. A valuable resource for film critics and historians, those in the film industry, and university cinema departments, as well as anyone with an interest in Danish art and culture, My Only Great Passion provides long neglected insights into the man who first raised European film above the level of entertainment and placed it in the realm of art.

An Iranian immigrant struggling to integrate into 1970s German society, the filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944-98) has become a neglected figure in discussions of diaspora cinema. In this - the first English-language book to reflect on his work and its implications for creativity in the diasporic conditions of urban displacement - a range of international scholars provide a comprehensive account of Shahid Saless's films and production methods. Outlining his affinity with celebrated directors like Chantal Akerman and Abbas Kiarostami, as well as visual artists like Romuald Karmakar, the contributors firmly position Shahid Saless as a filmmaker who speaks forcefully to the traumas of displacement and migration.

A comprehensive critical survey of the impact of 9/11 on Film, written by some of the foremost scholars in American cinemaAmerican Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 is a ground-breaking collection of essays by some of the foremost scholars writing in the field of contemporary American film. Through a dynamic critical analysis of the defining films of the turbulent post-9/11 decade, the volume explores and interrogates the impact of 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' on American cinema and culture. In a vibrant discussion of films like 'American Sniper' (2014), 'Zero Dark Thirty' (2012), 'Spectre' (2015), 'The Hateful Eight' (2015), 'Lincoln' (2012), 'The Mist' (2007), 'Children of Men' (2006), 'Edge of Tomorrow' (2014) and 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' (2015), noted authors Geoff King, Guy Westwell, John Shelton Lawrence, Ian Scott, Andrew Schopp, James Kendrick, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke and many others consider the power of popular film to function as a potent cultural artefact, able to both reflect the defining fears and anxieties of the tumultuous era, but also shape them in compelling and resonant ways.Key FeaturesFifteen original essays by some of the foremost scholars in American CinemaFeatures essays on the key films of the era, along with many that have previously been overlooked in scholarly literatureThe volume is critically informed but vibrant and engagingIncludes chapters by Geoff King, Guy Westwell, John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett, Ian Scott, Andrew Schopp, James Kendrick, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke and many othersCase Studies'AmericanEast' (Hesham Issawi, 2008) 'American Sniper' (Clint Eastwood, 2014)'Avengers: Age of Ultron' (Joss Whedon, 2015)'Casino Royale' (Martin Campbell, 2006)'Children of Men' (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006) 'Django Unchained' (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)'Edge of Tomorrow' (Doug Liman, 2014)'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' (Stephen Daldry, 2011)'Halloween' (John Carpenter, 1978)'Halloween' (Rob Zombie, 2007)'Halloween II' (Rob Zombie, 2009)'The Hateful Eight' (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)'Inglourious Basterds' (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)'The Kingdom' (Peter Berg, 2007)'Lincoln' (Steven Spielberg, 2012)'Marvel Avengers Assemble' (Joss Whedon, 2012) U.S Title The Avengers'Pearl Harbour' (Michael Bay, 2001)'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' (Mira Nair, 2012)'RoboCop' (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)'RoboCop' (Jose Padilha, 2014)'The Siege' (Edward Zwick, 1998)'Source Code' (Duncan Jones, 2011)'Spectre' (Sam Mendes, 2015)'Unstoppable' (Tony Scott, 2011)'The Walk' (Robert Zemeckis, 2015)'The War Within' (Joseph Castrello, 2005)'Zero Dark Thirty' (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

A new critical and theoretical approach to a neglected aspect of Pedro Almodovar's cinemaOne of Spain's most celebrated directors, Pedro Almodovar has won international recognition for his dark comedy-dramas like 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown', 'All About My Mother' and 'Volver'. Reconceptualising Almodovar's films as theoretical and political resources, this innovative book examines a neglected aspect of his cinema: its engagement with the traumatic past, with subjective and collective memory, and with the ethical and political meanings that result from this engagement. With close readings of Almodovar's films from the 1990s and 2000s, including 'Bad Education' and 'The Skin I Live In', Julian Daniel Gutierrez-Albilla explores how Almodovar's cinema mourns and witnesses the traces of trauma, drawing on theoretical approaches from trauma studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, film studies and visual studies to suggest that his work proposes an ethical model based on our compassionate relations to others, and envisions a world co-inhabited by plurality and difference.Key featuresExplores how Pedro Almodovar engages with the traumatic pastIncludes close readings of Almodovar's films from the 1990s and 2000sDraws on theoretical approaches from trauma studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, film studies and visual studies

Twenty-first century film and television is overwhelmed with images of the undead. Vampires and zombies have often been seen as oppositional: one alluring, the other repellant; one seductive, the other infectious. With case studies of films like I Am Legend and 28 Days Later, as well as TV programmes like Angel and The Walking Dead, this book challenges these popular assumptions and reveals the increasing interconnection of undead genres. Exploring how the figure of the vampire has been infused with the language of science, disease and apocalypse, while the zombie text has increasingly been influenced by the trope of the 'reluctant' vampire, Stacey Abbott shows how both archetypes are actually two sides of the same undead coin. When considered together they present a dystopian, sometimes apocalyptic, vision of twenty-first century existence.

This is the first book-length study in English on Chabrol since 1970. Chabrol has always been a neglected figure in the French New Wave but has recently been declared 'possibly the greatest living film director in France'.. Coincides with the recent renewal of interest in Chabrol, which has seen his back catalogue released in the UK on video.. Celebration of Chabrol's fiftieth film recently, Rien ne va plus prompted many festivals and retrospectives. Publication coincides with Chabrol's new film which is discussed in this study.. Writtten by one of the liveliest critics in French cinema - author of Contemporary French Cinema. -- .

While The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari became an international film classic, its director, Robert Wiene, was disparaged and even forgotten. Wiene's oeuvre, however, exhibits a a surprising versatility and quality, featuring Raskolnikov, an expressionist adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, INRI, a monumental Bible epic, Orlac's Hands, a psychological thriller, and Der Rosenkavalier, an ambitious opera film. His last film, Ultimatum (1938), is a vehement warning of the approaching war, which remains relevant today. With painstaking research of the major European film archives, the author's detailed portrait reveals a career far more differentiated than hitherto acknowledged. Caligari though rated the second most important film in German film history in a recent critic's and scholar's poll -- was a landmark rather than a culmination in a career that successfully oscillated between artistic and commercial interests.

As the field of film studies rediscovers film history and the value of historical context for the analysis of individual films, monographs on filmmakers are increasingly valuable to scholars and students of both film history and cultural studies. Through the provocative and prolific career of Robert Wiene, a wider, more dynamic view of fantasy production in the Weimar Republic is revealed, enabling the reader to better appreciate the complex shapes of Weimar cinema, its inimitable blend of modernism and mass culture, of avant-garde enterprise, and generic production.

The Films of Jess Franco looks at the work of Jesus ""Jess"" Franco (1930-2013), one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but he also dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science fiction to pornography. Although he built his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic. Editors Antonio Lazaro-Reboll and Ian Olney have assembled a team of scholars to examine Franco's offbeat films, which command an international cult following and have developed a more mainstream audience in recent years. Arguing that his multifaceted, paradoxical cinema cannot be pinned down by any one single approach, this edited volume features twelve original essays on Franco's movies written from a variety of different perspectives. This collection does not avoid the methodologies most commonly used in the past to analyze Franco's work-auteur criticism, genre criticism, and cult film criticism-yet it does show how Franco's films complicate these critical approaches. The contributors open up fresh avenues for academic inquiry by considering his oeuvre from a range of viewpoints, including transnational film studies, cinephilia studies, and star studies. The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director's work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.

While The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari became an international film classic, its director, Robert Wiene, was disparaged and even forgotten. Wiene's oeuvre, however, exhibits a a surprising versatility and quality, featuring Raskolnikov, an expressionist adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, INRI, a monumental Bible epic, Orlac's Hands, a psychological thriller, and Der Rosenkavalier, an ambitious opera film. His last film, Ultimatum (1938), is a vehement warning of the approaching war, which remains relevant today. With painstaking research of the major European film archives, the author's detailed portrait reveals a career far more differentiated than hitherto acknowledged. Caligari though rated the second most important film in German film history in a recent critic's and scholar's poll -- was a landmark rather than a culmination in a career that successfully oscillated between artistic and commercial interests.

As the field of film studies rediscovers film history and the value of historical context for the analysis of individual films, monographs on filmmakers are increasingly valuable to scholars and students of both film history and cultural studies. Through the provocative and prolific career of Robert Wiene, a wider, more dynamic view of fantasy production in the Weimar Republic is revealed, enabling the reader to better appreciate the complex shapes of Weimar cinema, its inimitable blend of modernism and mass culture, of avant-garde enterprise, and generic production.

Examines the politics of female authorship in relation to contemporary documentary practicesThis book, like its twin volume 'Female Authorship and the Documentary Image', centres on pressing issues in relation to female authorship in contemporary documentary practices. Addressing the politics of representation and authorship both behind and in front of the camera, a range of international scholars now expand the theoretical and practical framework informing the current scholarship on documentary cinema, which has so far neglected questions of gender.'Female Agency and Documentary Strategies' centres on how self-portraiture and contemporary documentary manifestations such as blogging and the prevalent usage of social media shape and inform female subjectivities and claims to truth. The book examines the scope of authorship and agency open to women using these technologies as a form of activism, centring on notions of relationality, selfhood and subjectivity, and includes interviews with Hong Kong based activist filmmaker and scholar Vivian Wenli Lin and Spanish documentarist Mercedes Alvarez.ContributorsAnna Backman Rogers, University of GothenburgLinda C. Ehrlich, Writer, Teacher, EditorKerreen Ely-Harper, Creative Media Researcher and Filmmaker Kristopher Fallon, University of California, DavisCadence Kinsey, University of YorkCarla Maia, Centro Universitario UNALidia Meras, Film Historian and ResearcherAnna Misiak, Falmouth UniversityKim Munro, Filmmaker, Artist and Teacher Kate Nash, University of LeedsJohn A. Riley, Woosong UniversityMonica Titton, University of Applied Arts and at the Academy of Fine Arts in ViennaBoel Ulfsdotter, Independent Scholar Gail Vanstone, York University, Toronto

Carrie Tarr's analysis of the cinema of Diane Kurys is the first full-length study of this director, whose delightfully unsentimental reconstructions of the lives of girls and women in post-war France have established her as a distinctive presence in contemporary French film-making. Tarr traces Kurys' trajectory from actress to author, director and producer of her own films and situates her work within debates on women's film-making and female authorship. The book includes detailed readings of each of Kurys' films to date, from the evocation of growing up in the 1960s in "Diabolo Menthe" to the dilemmas facing contemporary women artists in "A la Folie." The conclusion defines Kurys' "authorial signature" and discusses the extent to which she has been able to create a space for female subjectivity within the constraints of contemporary French culture.

The impact of French film critic Andre Bazin (1918-1958) on the development of film studies, though generally acknowledged, remains contested. A passionate initiator of film culture during his lifetime, his ideas have been challenged, defended and revived throughout his afterlife. Studying Film with Andre Bazin offers an entirely original interpretation of major concepts from Bazin's legacy, such as auteur theory, realism, film language and the influence of film on other arts (poetry and painting in particular). By examining mostly unknown and uncollected texts, Blandine Joret explains Bazin's methodology and adopts it in a contemporary reading, linking his ideas to major philosophical and scientific frameworks as well as more recent media practices such as advertising, CGI, 3D cinema and Virtual Reality. In tune with 21st-century concerns in media culture and film studies, this book addresses a wide readership of film scholars, students and cinephiles.

As one of the foremost Spanish directors of all time, Luis Bunuel's filmography has been the subject of innumerable studies. Despite the fact that the twenty films he made in Mexico between 1946 and 1965 represent the most prolific stage of his career as a filmmaker, these have remained relatively neglected in writing on Bunuel and his work. This book focuses on nine of the director's films made in Mexico in order to show that a concerted focus on space, an important aspect of the films' narratives that is often intimated by scholars, yet rarely developed, can unlock new philosophical meaning in this rich body of work. Although in recent years Bunuel's Mexican films have begun to enjoy a greater presence in criticism on the director, they are often segregated according to their perceived critical value, effectively creating two substrands of work: the independent and the studio potboiler. The interdisciplinary approach of this book unites the two, focusing on films such as Los olvidados, Nazarin, and El angel exterminador alongside La mort en ce jardin, The Young One, and Simon del desierto, among others. In doing so, it avoids the tropes most often associated with Bunuel's cinema-surrealism, Catholicism, the derision of the bourgeoisie-and the approach most often invoked in analysis of these themes: psychoanalysis. Instead, this book takes inspiration from the fields of human geography, anthropology, and philosophy, applying these to film-focused readings of Bunuel's Mexican cinema to argue that, ultimately, these films depict an overriding sense of placelessness, overtly or subliminally enacting a search for belonging that forces the viewer to question what it means to be in place.

When Armando Bo and Isabel Sarli began making sexploitation films together in 1956, they provoked audiences by featuring explicit nudity that would increasingly become more audacious, constantly challenging contemporary norms. Their Argentine films developed a large and international fan base. Analyzing the couple's films and their subsequent censorship, Violated Frames develops a new, roughly constructed, and "bad" archive of relocated materials to debate questions of performance, authorship, stardom, sexuality, and circulation. Victoria Ruetalo situates Bo and Sarli's films amidst the popular culture and sexual norms in post-1955 Argentina, and explores these films through the lens of bodies engaged in labor and leisure in a context of growing censorship. Under Peron, manual labor produced an affect that fixed a specific type of body to the populist movement of Peronism: a type of body that was young, lower-classed, and highly gendered. The excesses of leisure in exhibition, enjoyment, and ecstasy in Bo and Sarli's films interrupted the already fragmented film narratives of the day and created alternative sexual possibilities.

The first full-length account of the life and work of Joseph H. Lewis, the noted director of films such as My Name is Julia Ross (1945) and The Halliday Brand (1957). Because most commentators and interviewers have focused on Lewis' contributions to film noir and particularly Gun Crazy and The Big Combo, Nevins tries to give equal time to Lewis' early B westerns and television series episodes, including episodes of The Rifleman and Gunsmoke that he directed at the end of his career. Nevins's narrative is interspersed with Lewis's own reflections on his life and career, adding a personal element that enlivens the text. A detailed filmography includes Lewis's editorial work, feature films, and episodes of TV series.