Books like The early film criticism of François Truffaut by François Truffaut

sixth edition

A comprehensive guide to the most essential films of all time, spanning classics like *2001: A Space Odyssey* to legendary Westerns and beyond, with curated reviews that highlight their cinematic significance and audience impact.

"For over four decades, Stanley Kauffmann's skilled, cultivated, and impassioned film reviews in the New Republic have guided filmgoers and charted the development of the cinema arts. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has been an independent voice in film criticism, challenging preconceptions, skewering pretensions, and championing a wide diversity of films, from Hollywood blockbusters to over-looked gems.". "In his latest collection of film writings, Kauffmann discusses the most influential, exciting, and innovative films released since 1993, as well as less successful - sometimes disastrous - efforts. From major films by established Hollywood directors (Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Oliver Stone's Nixon) to works from the iconoclastic world of independent American film (Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey) to the best of world cinema (Abbas Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry and Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels), Kauffmann offers his lively and considered views of over sixty films. In other essays, he compares cinematic adaptations of Mozart's operas, explores changing public attitudes toward film as an art form, assesses the possibilities of accurately dramatizing the Holocaust, and recalls the careers of such important figures in film history as David Lean, Billy Wilder, and Akira Kurosawa. A model of provocative writing about the liveliest art, Regarding Film will delight ardent movie lovers everywhere."--BOOK JACKET.

Maryel Locke and Charles Warren present twelve original essays by film critics, filmmakers, theologians, and philosophers that examine the 1985 film Hail Mary, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and its companion film, The Book of Mary, directed by Anne-Marie Mieville. (The films are released under the one title Hail Mary) The interpretative essays offer a rich spectrum of analysis and opinion representing many divergent points of view about critical theory, the status of women, and the value of film as a medium. Locke and Warren also include two important interviews with Godard, brief biographies and complete filmographies of Godard and Mieville, a shot breakdown of the two films with the English subtitles, and the script of the French dialogue to complete a remarkably comprehensive treatment of these important films. The only film based on the biblical story of the Virgin Mary, Godard's Hail Mary is a contemporary Swiss/French representation of Mary's virgin pregnancy, the birth of her son, and her relationship to Joseph and her young child. Mieville's companion film is about a young girl named Mary whose parents get a divorce. While neither film is overtly religious, the initial release of Hail Mary brought public protests, court cases, a physical attack on Godard, and condemnation by the Pope. An insight emerging compellingly from the volume as a whole is that the camera, which possesses the capacity to invoke the mystery of human sexuality, itself partakes of, incarnates, the mystery of sexual difference. That is a fundamental fact about the medium of film, but a fact that current film theory, with its incessant identifications of the camera as masculine, denies. This is the central claim that, in the context of contemporary film study, gives the book a sharp critical edge and that seems likely to provoke considerable comment within the field.

A comprehensive, updated guide to film theory and criticism, covering nearly a century of cinematic aesthetics, controversies, and interdisciplinary studies.