Reading film

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Anyone know of any really great books on filmmaking? So far I'm convinced "Making Movies" by Sidney Lumet and "Understanding Movies" by Louis D. Giannetti are essentials.

― Anthony (Anthony F), Tuesday, 24 June 2003 01:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Rebel Without a Crew is really inspirational, whatever you feel about Rodriguez himself.

I heartily recommend the Oxford History of World Cinema book if you want a good overview of the entire art historically from pretty much every angle.

What else? I'm certain that some of the Cahiers du Cinema have been collected and translated. There's Eisenstein's two books, as well. Stanley Cavell does some clever, though sometimes controversial, work analyzing films. Oh, and can't forget Andre Bazin's "What Is Cinema?"

Michael Ondaatje did a really good book on Walter Murch if you're interested in editing.

I'm gonna think up some more in the meantime, most likely.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 24 June 2003 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Jonathan Rosenbaum's Moving Places is excellent and worth reading even if you don't like his criticism. It's sort of part-memoir, part social history of the movies.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 25 June 2003 06:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I wasn't fond of the Giannetti books (Understanding and the history one).

Felt like a little too much cheerleading, not enough critcism and information.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 26 June 2003 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

You have to remember that the Gianetti books are primarily used for teaching survey courses on film history and film technique. I don't know if they can necessarily stand completely on their own, as good a series of references for someone who isn't particularly strong on theory.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, 26 June 2003 23:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Must read Hitchcock/Truffault

mustmustmust.

Also the Projections series is good if you can find them

― jm (jtm), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

You have to remember that the Gianetti books are primarily used for teaching survey courses on film history and film technique.

OK, yeah, true. That's what mine were from actually.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Friday, 27 June 2003 01:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Bogdanovich's This Is Orson Welles is also a fine read, tho the editor sadly censored the bits where OW evidently ripped on every single director in America who wasn't himself or John Ford.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm pretty sure the original question was referring to book on the actual making-of-the-film aspects of filmmaking, and thereby I concur strongly with the Hitchcock/Truffaut recommendation.

However, if criticism and/or theory are to be included, I have to submit that everyone who reads film theory will one day come across Manny Farber's Negative Space and will come to fall in love with his criticism (if not necessarily his tastes, though I personally never liked Hawks until I read Farber's insistent defenses on his behalf).

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 27 June 2003 12:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Someone mentioned Moving Places. His Placing Movies, Movies as Politics, and Movie Wars are also definitely worth checking out. Also, the Contemporary Film Directors book he co-authored with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa on Abbas Kiarostami is, along with the BFI Bresson book, one of the best books I've read on a particular filmmaker in recent memory. Speaking of Bresson, I finally got around to reading Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style in Film which I admired certain aspects of though I disagree strongly with Schrader's strictly metaphyiscal readings of the three directors the book focuses on, especially Ozu, which strike me as ultimately saying far more about Schrader than about Ozu, Bresson, or Dreyer.

― Josh Timmermann (Josh Timmermann), Friday, 4 July 2003 21:57 (twenty-two years ago)

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