The Best Books About Film

[Black Hat]

Been slowly making my way through it. Is there anything you'd like to know?

[Mr Sheldrake]

The Bordwell book is available to be borrowed as an e-book on Hoopla currently, for those cash strapped (like me). I haven’t downloaded it yet, but soon.

I would like to recommend The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America, part of Wallflower Press’s great cinema collection of director studies. A group of essays on Malick’s first four films, academic, but relatively jargon free. Those on Badlands really ramped up my appreciation of his debut after a recent re-watch.

[Ann Harding]

Just tooting my own horn a little. My book about 'Continental Films' just came out in English from University of Wisconsin Press:
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5918.htm
I just got my first (good) review from the Shepherd Express:
https://shepherdexpress.com/film/i-hate ... the-nazis/

A review just came out in the latest Sight & Sound You can read it here. I am delighted!

[knives]

Is there a really thorough history of Termite Terrace out there. I’m in particular curious about the various personalities that floated through like Jack King and Ben Hardaway.

[dustybooks]

Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons isn’t just about Schlesinger/Warners but is an extraordinary book and most likely has what you’re looking for. Barrier is a great writer and interviewer and the book is tough-minded and passionate.

[Matt]

Chuck Jones’ 1989 biography is more about the studio and production process than his personal life, but it probably couldn’t be considered a comprehensive history.

[knives]

Thank you both.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, Chuck Jones's grandson, Craig Kausen, gives occasional talks on his work - I caught one at MoMI on The Grinch, and afterwards I ran into him at the actual exhibit they had of Jones's film. He was very cordial to fans so I went over to say hello and we wound up talking for a while. I asked him a few questions on the whole day-to-day process and was extremely impressed by how hard they worked. These guys weren't just good, they were extremely dedicated and took their jobs very seriously, and they weren't even paid all that well. I was curious about how Jones et al went about directing multiple cartoons, and basically they would have multiple films going on simultaneously at different stages of work. In other words, they'd be jumping from one cartoon to another at any given time, all the time. (I'm used to hearing about people focusing primarily on one film or one song at any given stretch before moving on to something else.) From the sound of it, overtime pay didn't really exist, and they had high standards, so if someone's work wasn't satisfactory, it wasn't uncalled for to be asked to take the work home and finish it before the next day.

[Ann Harding]

Just tooting my own horn a little. My book about 'Continental Films' just came out in English from University of Wisconsin Press:
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5918.htm
I just got my first (good) review from the Shepherd Express:
https://shepherdexpress.com/film/i-hate ... the-nazis/

A review just came out in the latest Sight & Sound You can read it here. I am delighted!

If you want to purchase my Continental Films book, University of Wisconsin Press is giving a 30% discount until June 15th. Just go there.

[senseabove]

If anyone is still looking out for it, the new translation of Bazin published by Caboose Books is finally, actually coming out. Caboose hopes to start sending copies this week. Still only available in Canada, but if you can find a book mule...

[domino harvey]

Really hope there ends up being an easy way to get a copy in the states

[domino harvey]

Really hope there ends up being an easy way to get a copy in the states

There is, for university library pricing of $175

[Ann Harding]

Just tooting my own horn a little. My book about 'Continental Films' just came out in English from University of Wisconsin Press:
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5918.htm
I just got my first (good) review from the Shepherd Express:
https://shepherdexpress.com/film/i-hate ... the-nazis/

A review just came out in the latest Sight & Sound You can read it here. I am delighted!

If you want to purchase my Continental Films book, University of Wisconsin Press is giving a 30% discount until June 15th. Just go there.

Yet another review. This time in the Times Literary Supplement: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/cont ... incendeau/

[yoloswegmaster]

Has anyone read Jean-Michel Frodon's book on Jia Zhangke? I noticed that it was available for sale from The Film Desk on the Vindgar Syndrome site and was curious to know if it's any good.

[denti alligator]

At the risk of revealing my identity (there’s no way around this), I would like to promote my new book on Murnau’s The Last Laugh. The German Cinema Classics series it’s in is really excellent, but unfortunately they haven’t been selling well. Normally I wouldn’t do this kind of promotion, but I want the series to survive. The books are similar to the BFI series in layout (lots of high quality images). I’ve read most of them and they are uniformly excellent. My book won’t be out until September, but you can preorder it here for 35% off with this discount code:

SpoilerShow

BB135

I realized recently that the origins of my reading go back to a discussion on this board from about 17 years ago! I wanted to thank Herr Schreck in the acknowledgments but I couldn’t remember his last name (we met once in NYC)—whatever happened to him?

[dustybooks]

Just preordered for my library, thanks!

[Matt]

The Amazon Kindle e-book version of Andre Bazin on Adaptation: Cinema's Literary Imagination, edited by Dudley Andrew, is currently $23.99, the lowest it’s ever been.

[kekid]

Does anyone have recommendations for books on Iranian cinema?
I am looking for reviews of important films and filmmakers.
Amazon.com has a large number of books, so I am looking for suggestions based on personal knowledge.
Thank you.

[MitchPerrywinkle]

Does anyone have recommendations for books on Iranian cinema?
I am looking for reviews of important films and filmmakers.
Amazon.com has a large number of books, so I am looking for suggestions based on personal knowledge.
Thank you.

Hi kekid, if you want to get a pretty thorough overview of major works in Iranian Cinema, Hamid Naficy's 4-volume A Social History of Iranian Cinema is a great place to start. It covers the history of the medium in the country right up through the Green Movement, but it should tide you over until you try looking for more contemporary auteurs.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but a cursory search isn't yielding anything concrete: What are the best academic/analytical books out there about Hitchcock's films?

I've read and enjoyed several chapters of Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited, currently have out Bill Krohn's Hitchcock at Work from the lib (which I believe dusty books recommended in the Auteur thread), and have never read the "Truffaut interviews" (I don't know why, I always assumed they were more cheerleading questions/insightful about his own mannerisms than academic) - but I know some of you have taught classes on him/done deeper dives, and I'm curious whether any of these are hands-down the best, or if there's something better out there

[Rayon Vert]

I loved this one T: Hitchcock's Romantic Irony by Richard Allen. Like any good analytical book, made me view his oeuvre in a new, enriched light. Strong both on themes and style, and in the latter half on his expressionism and use of color.

A blurb by Charles Barr:

Richard Allen's book is a remarkable work of synthesis, drawing on a wide range of Hitchcock scholarship that now spans half a century. But it is more than synthesis: Allen has his own original take on the elements that combine to create what he calls Hitchcock's 'unique cinematic intelligence.' Arguing that the full richness of a classic like Rear Window can only be fully grasped if the film is 'understood in the context of the entire pattern of Hitchcock's work,' Allen sets himself to tease out that entire pattern, making illuminating links between films of different periods, genres, and styles. Above all, his analysis of the films' elaborate visual aesthetic serves as a means to get to the heart of what they convey about the intricacies of human sexuality. An exhilarating read.

[ianthemovie]

Personally I've found Robin Wood's book to be the most lucid and helpful in opening up the major critical frameworks on Hitchcock. Donald Spoto's The Art of Alfred Hitchcock is another fairly good intro-level overview of the major themes of the films, though if you've already read Robin Wood it may not be all that useful.

Other titles you might consider, with some caveats:

William Rothman's The Murderous Gaze is a fairly good exercise in what can be learned from doing a shot-by-shot "close reading" of a film, though he only covers The Lodger, Murder!, Shadow of a Doubt, and Psycho.

Lesley Brill's The Hitchcock Romance - fairly insightful and accessible analyses of many of the major films with a focus on love/relationships/"couplings," including films about tragic or failed romance like Vertigo. Some of the conclusions he draws strike me as superficial. Nevertheless he is good at pointing out some thought-provoking details and patterns in the films.

Dan Callahan's recent book The Camera Lies discusses the acting and performances in (I think) every Hitchcock film, a somewhat refreshing perspective. I've only read excerpts of this; I enjoy Callahan's writing very much and he makes great observations about screen performance (though this book is less argumentatively framed than others).

When delving into critical work on Hitchcock you should be prepared to engage with a lot of film theory, especially psychoanalytic and feminist/gender theory, which is to be expected given the primacy of Hitchcock's films in establishing key theories of the gaze. For that reason many of the major books can be tough going. Tania Modleski's The Women Who Knew Too Much is one of the more useful psychoanalytic-feminist analyses of Hitchcock, IMO, assuming you have a basic working knowledge of Freud and Lacan. The anthology of essays edited by Slavoj Zizek (Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Hitchcock...) is strictly Lacan/psychoanalysis-focused.

Some other good anthologies of critical essays on Hitchcock: A Hitchcock Reader, Hitchcock's America, and Hitchcock: Centenary Essays offer your basic grab-bag of academic writing, using a range of theoretical approaches (psychoanalysis, historicism, feminist and queer theory, etc.). Some of the individual Hitchcock films have entire books of critical essays devoted solely to them. Psycho: A Casebook contains a nice sampling of critical perspectives on that film, including analyses of the Bernard Herrmann score and its marketing/exhibition.

The Truffaut book is a must-have for any film lover's library, in my opinion. It may not be the kind of "academic/analytical" work you're looking for but it is thoroughly entertaining, and as a window into Hitchcock's process it is indispensable. I'm also fond of Camille Paglia's delightfully undisciplined monograph on The BIrds for the BFI Film Classics series.

[domino harvey]

Paglia’s BFI book is def an acquired taste, but I thought it was a riot too

[Maltic]

Dan Callahan's recent book The Camera Lies discusses the acting and performances in (I think) every Hitchcock film, a somewhat refreshing perspective. I've only read excerpts of this; I enjoy Callahan's writing very much and he makes great observations about screen performance (though this book is less argumentatively framed than others).

There's a chapter on Cary Grant's performance in North by Northwest, and one on the various performances in Rear Window, in Naremore's classic Acting in the Cinema.

Seems a little insane for Callahan to take on the entire filmography from that perspective. Thanks for the tip, though. And apparently, he has a similar book with analyses of all of Barbara Stanwyck's performances, which I will also be checking out.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks everyone, I think I'll start with RV's rec and the Paglia because they seem the most interesting, and I'll grab the Truffaut just to have, as well as Wood's since I really love his analyses of Marnie and Rear Window and would love to reread them around viewings.

Dan Callahan's recent book The Camera Lies discusses the acting and performances in (I think) every Hitchcock film, a somewhat refreshing perspective. I've only read excerpts of this; I enjoy Callahan's writing very much and he makes great observations about screen performance (though this book is less argumentatively framed than others).

There's a chapter on Cary Grant's performance in North by Northwest

That would've been cool to read for the Grant project, since I think a few of us argued it was a lock at #1 due to Grant being granted the opportunity to demonstrate his full range of talent with one of the most diverse performances I can think of from a stoic star. Robin Wood even wrote a chapter about North By Northwest in his book, which I had to read because it seemed like a superfluous analytical effort - and while a lot of it is obvious and skippable, he mentions a few insights that I hadn't considered and somehow made me appreciate one of my favorite films even more, including the progression Grant is tasked with selling.