Video Production Books

Easy to read, this informative book provides many anecdotes about Hollywood's bizarre casting decisions. Enjoyable to the cinema buff as well as grandma and grandpa; a great gift for anyone who loves the movies. Many of the tales involve classic movies, with which most are familiar. A real conversation provoker.

This book is for people like me who want to write and direct movies. Liek Night (M. Night Shyamalan, to you)I only want to Direct movies I write myself, not other peoples' works. I used to want to be a actor, but at the end of my acting class after my final project, a monolog, my acting teacher told me "You know, not everyone is meant to be an actor." So I am taking his advice and encouragement and am going to instead work on my directing!!! Wish me luck and go see my movies, PE-OPLE!!!

I have read many books on Hawks, and I enjoy "Hawks on Hawks," very much.

This book, however, turned out to be interesting in a surprising way. Most of these interviews come from the late Sixties and early Seventies, when Hawks' career was ending. You can see Hawks putting a brave face on his late work, glad for the chance to be working, but once his career is over, he assesses those films very clearly. Also of interest is that the book shows how the first generation of film students came to Hawks, seeking his input on the political struggles of the era and the emerging women's movement. Seeing the clash between their expectations and Hawks' opinions is almost a movie in itself.

Also, Hawks expresses himself vigorously about other directors, something I hadn't really seen before. (He is especially harsh on post-WWII Capra.)

So even if you have read "Hawks on Hawks," "Howard Hawks Inteviews" will surprise you and give you a fuller portrait of the man behind all those terrific movies.

I took an Ingmar Bergman class, and I therefore had to watch a lot of Bergman films as well as analyze and write about them. Many of Bergman films as many know are sometimes very hard to understand. However this book cleared up so many things for me in the films. The fact the book is mostly Bergman commenting on his own films is great, so you don't have someone else trying to interpret someone else's mind. I you need or want to better understand and enjoy Bergman's works, get this book!!

Invaluable reading for anyone interested in behind-the-scenes and front-of-the-camera insight into this classic Japanese director. Mellen's "In the Realm of the Senses" is truly "The Story of Oshima." It proved to be essential research for my own forthcoming book, "SADA: An Erotic Tale of Love and Murder."

There are many things in life for which I'm grateful (and doubtlessly, because of my thickness, many more for which I should be but aren't). One of the things I'm most grateful for is Ingmar Bergman. He's simply the greatest film maker of my lifetime (and there have been some very good ones--e.g., Kurosawa, Herzog, Tarkovsky, and Fellini). As both writer and director, he reaches depths that most other film makers--especially Hollywood ones--can't even approximate.

A man of Bergman's genius deserves a talented interpreter, and Robert Emmet Long fills that bill. His Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage is simply the best commentary on Bergman I know. Beautifully illustrated, drawing on Bergman's print and film interviews as well as the film maker's own autobiographies, Long's book explores the "personal myth" that Bergman documented in film after film. That personal myth--or worldview--born of both Bergman's private life and his philosophical reflections, includes themes generally referred to as "existential": human contingency, the absence of God, alienation, meaning or purpose, fluidity of self, loneliness and despair. In making his films, Bergman was really engaging in both autobiography and philosophy: exorcising his personal demons and trying to find meaning in the universe. The final speech Carl Gustav makes in "Fanny and Alexander," urging his listeners to celebrate the little joys of life that always have as their broader background the indifference of the universe, is the position that Bergman finally seems to have arrived at.

All this is wonderfully captured in Long's interpretive summaries of Bergman's films and theatre productions. Long doesn't merely provide plot synopses. He always strives to interpret, in the best sense of the word, what he describes. To take one example, from Long's perceptive reflection on "The Silence": the film, writes Long, "introduces a new dimension in Bergman's conception of cinema. Realistic perception is replaced by a total immersion in a subjective world in which characters embody psychic states" (p. 107). Ester and Alma, like the two lead characters in Bergman's later "Persona," "are different parts of a single psyche."

Highly recommended. As a nice complement, because of its incredibly detailed (but relatively noninterpretive) plot summaries, the reader might consider Hubert I. Cohen's Ingmar Bergman: The Art of Confession (1993).

The production values of a famous film auteur are revealed in Robert Emmet Long's book, JAMES IVORY IN CONVERSATION.

Merchant Ivory production secrets are revealed in great detail, with much gossip and in great depth. Long's questions are very knowledgeable, and James Ivory's answers are candid, humorous and often quite pointed. We learn much about his relationship with Anthony Hopkins. We find out such how frightening the Eiffel Tower scene was for the actors in LE DIVORCE. And, we go behind the scenes as Ivory interviews various cast members and finally lands them for roles in his beautiful movies.

His partnership with the late Ismail Merchant is set before us warmly, and his appreciation for India, Paris and Venice are detailed delightfully.

Throughout the interview, Ivory gives the specifics of his many uses for art and artists in his films. The difficulties in working with Picasso's family are well told, and the fabrication of many pieces of art for his films (with permission from the artists, of course) is well explained and fascinating.

Students of film and art will be smiling throughout the book as the settings in so many wonderful films are described with life-like realism.

Reviewed by Larry Rochelle, Author of BOURBON AND BLISS, DEATH AND DEVOTION, THE MEPHISTO DIARY, GULF GHOST and BLUE ICE.

Andre Bazin makes a meticuluous and extraordinary analysis around the entire filmography of this famous filmmaker .
There are many issues to know and we have to miss the fact Andre Bazin jus only lived forty years .
But in Francois Truffaut words , this is the most complete book about the greatest french filmmaker in the century .
In my personal opinion only two directors overpasses him in this order: Robert Bresson and Marcel Carne.

Thank God for university presses that publish books about little known or even unavailable films. Godard's Pierrot le fou (France, 1965) was recently released on DVD, and if any film ever needed footnotes, this is it. Now one can read Cambridge Film Handbooks's Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, edited by David Wills, and enjoy the book as a supplement to an almost-forgotten masterpiece. Pierrot le fou is a cinematic work that nails the '60s in 110 minutes. The plot is quite simple: A bored man portrayed by ultracool Jean-Paul Belmondo goes to a party with his wife, at which everyone converses in advertising slogans. He leaves and runs off with his baby-sitter, played by the beautiful Anna Karina, and they go on a crime spree. Ridiculous? Well, this is a Godard film. The baby-sitter is named Marianne, and she symbolizes the French republic, as she is consistently clothed in the colors of France. Marianne thinks she is in a movie (which she is) and wants emotion and movement. The Belmondo character, Pierrot, wants to leave civilization, live on an island, and read books -- a character with whom I fully sympathize. He wants to live in words and thoughts, and she wants emotion and action. The film is about role-playing, the nature of cinema and its audience, Vietnam (where the French had difficulties before the Americans did), and the dynamics between reading and action.

The book contains five essays, each focusing on specific aspects of the film. The writings form a critical study, rather than just including gossip about the film shoot and about its participants. The most interesting essay is the last one, "Pierrot le fou and Post New Wave Cinema," by Jill Forbes. The essay focuses on the complexity of Pierrot le fou: Since the characters know they are acting out their dramas in a film, Forbes discusses how this relates to their world in terms of audience. Forbes also writes about Godard's use of the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, who invented a poetic language "that will be used by all the senses." Godard plays with film genres, such as the musical, and incorporates literature into his cinema as well. Not only are there literary chapters named after Rimbaud's poetry in the film, but his use of color and quotations gives the work layers of meaning. One could argue that his films are really open-ended essays on the nature of language, images, and life. I recommend this book, only as a supplement to this fantastic film, which is a sort of book in its own right.

This book obviously required years of tireless research and extensive resources. Mr. Levy has left no stone unturned in his efforts to provide every aspect of technical information to the prospective John Ford scholar