We’re embracing #Noirvember this month, a time to celebrate the shadowy, twisted world of film noir. Our curated reading list introduces some of the most significant figures and films that define this timeless and enigmatic cinematic genre.
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This book examines the career of Germaine Dulac, a pioneering French filmmaker and feminist whose perspective, innovations and ardent promotion of cinema are documented in her theoretical writings.
The second edition of Peter Hutchings's landmark work on British horror cinema, featuring later writings by Hutchings and a new introduction by film historian Johnny Walker.
Surrealism and film after 1945
Surrealism and Film after 1945 is the first collection devoted to the vibrant culture of transnational surrealist cinema since the Second World War. Eleven chapters by leading and emerging scholars of surrealism and film studies establish the parameters of this history and situate surrealism as a major force in postwar cinema.
Charles Crichton, director of A Fish Called Wanda and several much-loved Ealing comedies, had one of the most remarkable careers in British film history. Featuring interviews with colleagues such as Dame Judi Dench, Petula Clark, John Cleese and Sir Michael Palin, this book provides the first comprehensive study of his work.
Duvivier was a giant of classic French cinema with a career spanning key moments of French film history. This analysis goes beyond its historical range to engage with key debates in film studies: notably auteurism, stardom and questions of the national.
This is a book for those who love British cinema and want to know more about its rise to popularity in the 1940s. The 'quality' films of the decade have been thoroughly explored already, but this book looks at the films the public actually went to see, and provides detailed information on the directors behind them.
Comprehensive overview of the director's body of work which yields new insights on the established classics of Lean's career as well as its lesser-known treasures
Despite his controversial reputation and international notoriety as a film-maker, no full-length study of Clouzot has ever been published in English. This book offers a significant revaluation of Clouzot's achievement, situating his life and work in the wider context of French cinema and society, and providing detailed analysis of his major films.
First and only comprehensive overview of Pagnol's career in English, and the only book in any language to link Pagnol's early career as a playwright with his controversial theories of cinema and his work as a film director.
This volume in the French Film Directors series has been long-awaited by students and academics of French and European cinema in particular and by Film Studies students in general.
A study of Anthony Asquith, which sets his work in the context of the history of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and cultural influences within which his films can be understood.
A lucid and informative account, drawing on unpublished material, of the career of one of the most successful and significant producers in British cinema. It provides discussion of all his films, including The Seventh Veil (1945), and affords an exceptional insight into the workings of the wartime and postwar British film and television industries.
European Film Noir is an innovative and original collection of essays that analyse specific noirs - France, Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy - framed by an inclusive overview of the 'noir phenomenon'.
The first to examine the work of a man once hailed as the finest film-maker to emerge from the British studio system after the Second World War, J. Lee Thompson
First in a series designed to situate and explain the films of French directors. A concise, accessible and original reading of Truffaut's films. A timely evaluation of the films of a popular director...