As befits his flinty films, Melville is a pugnacious, affectionate and slightly melancholy observer: sanguine and unequivocal about the daring with which his films were made. This is a gossipy and very colourful memoir, full of anecdotes and asides about Powell’s romantic life and his sometimes vexed relationships with studio bosses.

A wealth of documents, but also Alain Bergala’s ever-clear, precise prose on one of the film-makers he knows best. From old Hollywood to how franchises like Star Wars changed movie history, there’s a book here for any film lover! It's meaty but short with lots of wonderful photos to illustrate and make you want to see so many films - often films you forgot about and would like to see again!Hepburn’s fey, tomboyish persona may not have been radical exactly, but its very oddity created a worrying disturbance in her films that even the ritual clinch at the end didn’t entirely pacify.

Immerse yourself in the behind-the-scenes world of musical theatre, from the dance halls and vaudeville to the silver screen and sensational Broadway shows. If you love everything Hollywood and always want to get a glimpse behind the scenes, then historical books about film history are for you! Peppered with observations about friendship, love, and growing up, the books are as funny as the movie. From the birth of cinema right up until the present, The Film Book is essential reading for movie lovers everywhere. Here I have to declare an interest, in both senses: an enduring love of the Western, and a role in editing the much-expanded second edition of 2004.

Rediscover your big screen favourites and get acquainted with new recommendations with this ultimate guide to movies, directors, and genres. 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. Featuring a host of quirky character actors and quotable lines, this is essentially a meme factory from before there was such a thing.

We didn't think Paddington, a beloved fictional character in children's literature, could get any cuter—and then we saw him on the big screen. This account of a year at Twentieth Century Fox during the dying days of the dream factory is the best of the ‘inside Hollywood’ books by dint of Dunne’s peerlessly dry prose. While the answer to that question can certainly vary by personal preference, Hornaday seeks to discover how so many people can contribute to the development and success of a film, and how we as viewers can evaluate them and seek out the best movies. One of Jane Austen’s best books, it also inspired this coming-of-age teen comedy starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, and Paul Rudd.strikes just the right note of courteous provocation in its determination to reorient our view of popular cinema.

If debarred, then the 2000 edition of the Time Out Film Guide, being less bulky than it has since become. Wood’s patient, unpedantic, exegetical prose remains for me the permanent model of how to do these things.

But even more crucially, he understands how every general theory of cinema must start from its concrete particulars as an artform. His family is one of the richest and well-known families in the country, and his mother is not exactly welcoming of her son's new romance. This crime epic has been praised for its performances, filmmaking, quotable lines, and archetypal characters. Yet he was equally a master of the short demolition job (Princess O’Rourke: “An unobtrusive raising of the window, and the less said the better”), while his clairvoyant appreciation of Zéro de conduite almost single-handedly put Jean Vigo on the map in the English-speaking world.