Film Art: An Introduction

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In which the French critic says it all and shows us that further Bergman books must lie in new detail or a broader window on the film world. Grafe (1934-2002), in particular, combined a crisp, evocative, Barthesian style with a rigorous eye and brilliant mind. But this doesn’t allow for what he did after 1930, except to consider it a sad decline into official art. Affordable, deeply serious, clearly written, it gave us our first filmographies, 15 frame blow-ups from Battleship Potemkin and a cinematic canon that we eagerly accepted and then rebelled against.

This anthology was an effort to gather a range of work in film theory, film analysis, film history, and the philosophy of film which seemed not to fit into the agenda canonized in academic cinema studies. The Cinema of Eisenstein is my only book to win an award; it won the 1993 Theatre Library Association Award for the outstanding book in film, broadcasting, or recorded performance.While the original Pinocchio film was released back in the 1940s it is still considered a classic in Disney’s library. Film theorist André Bazin has written of John Ford’s Stagecoach: “ Stagecoach is the ideal example of the maturity of a style brought to classic perfection… Stagecoach is like a wheel, so perfectly made that it remains in equilibrium on its axis in any position.

The second essay analyzes visual style and is an expansion of the essay, “Intensified Continuity,” which appeared in Film Quarterly some years ago. I read this one until it fell apart, pre-viewing in my imagination films I had not yet seen and might never see. I’ve put together this huge list of the best movie art books featuring the best that cinema art can offer. I’m sure some future scholar will produce an admirable thesis comparing the changes in – and evolution of – what has come to be, along with everything else, a vicarious and incremental autobiography.It doesn’t matter if you don’t admire all her raving and comminations; she is almost always a gas, and brought to film criticism an addictive combination of driven, garrulous intensity and loose-limbed, slangy intimacy. A perfect example of the critical biography: informed, never complacent, analytical and with a superb knowledge of the industry background. Inside you’ll also find a bunch of raw sketches for character designs and rough storyboards for action sequences. The anthology (in two volumes) of the Cahiers and Liberation French critic offers a panoramic view of the changes French criticism went through from the 1960s to the ’90s.