The Film Book: A Complete Guide to the World of Cinema

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Turns out, there are lots of legal forms that go into making a movie. Here's a lawyer's handbook so you know just what you can and cannot do on set. It's really useful if you're shooting without permits and if you need to save money. Note: Publication dates are for first edition only, except where specified. However, votes for a particular title are collected together no matter what the edition (with the exception of Geoff Dyer’s voting for all five editions of David Thomson’s A Biographical Dictionary of Film). Why learn from one director when you can hear from dozens? Bogdonovich is spectacular as an interviewer and interviewee. He talks to some of the greatest directors of all time and you glean all the wisdom. The most candid and complete account of a film, and a famous disaster – which looks better every time you see it.

The best novel I know on the film-making process, set in the 1930s and dealing (as if from the experience of ‘Christopher’ himself) with the career of Austrian director Friedrich Bergmann, whose genius is thrillingly evoked. This guide to the horror (1983 edition), science fiction (1984) and Western (1984) genres is addictive, exhaustive and unsurpassed. A huge study of independent American horror films of the 1970s and ’80s, this is a rare book that tells me things I didn’t already know. A monumental achievement, and it’s only the first part. Truth be told, I am not the best shooter. But when I work with a DP I find this book very useful at upholding my end of the conversation. This is where you can learn the lingo and shots you can try on your own. There are lots of things that go into making an independent movie. It's not just money but personalities and structure. Also, so many books focus on Hollywood insiders that this one really shows what it would be like for YOU to make a movie.One of the great landmarks, a meeting of two film cultures, two languages, two personalities – full of omissions and evasions, but richly suggestive, and a demonstration that criticism and creation can enter into a significant dialogue. King. General. Spy. Together they must find a way to forge a future in the darkness. Or watch a nation fall. A masterpiece of stills photography that captures the world behind the movie camera, culminating in her extraordinary on-set pics of Marilyn and The Misfits.

The most sophisticated marriage of philosophy and film written. Brimming with ideas and beautifully written. Impactful Storytelling: Ultimately, the goal is to tell a story that is impactful and engaging. By being economical, writers can create a narrative that maintains the audience's interest and delivers a powerful message or experience in a concise manner. My favourite Kael collection because the period it covers (1973-75) coincides with so many of her true passions. Again, I'm not the best with this stuff, so I love reading and getting better. This book has the nuts and bolts of what goes into creating the looks of your favorite films but also stories of how challenges were overcome on set. It's a problem solver's dream. The great American novelist turned his attention to a Hollywood he knew well for this collection of short stories about a washed-up screenwriter, which retain their relevance and punch to this day.

After three decades of use, it’s an old companion, rather taken for granted and occasionally irritatingly prejudiced (eg on Ford), as well as funny and endlessly suggestive about avenues to explore; but whatever reservations it inspires (and expresses) it’s a grand example of appreciative, impassioned, intelligent, encyclopaedic criticism that shaped a generation or two of film watchers.

Two tomes that (should have, at least) changed the way we think about film history; two attempts to understand the (extra)ordinary in film cultures deemed totalitarian and therefore artistically irrelevant by our unquestioning middlebrow culture and its collaborators high and low.The nearest we have to a British national filmography was created not by any institute or university but by one man. Magisterial. It was written over 30 years ago, yet remains the most lucid and critically coherent account of American avant-garde film. The book that every young film snob carried around or even memorised in the early 70s – just in case you might catch a rare Edgar Ulmer B movie in a rep cinema (yes, that’s how we saw films maudits in those days). Sarris’ classification of directors on different levels – from the ‘Pantheon’ to ‘Lightly Likeable’, via ‘Expressive Esoterica’ and ‘Less than Meets the Eye’ is imprinted on my attitude to American cinema, and I still have to argue in my head with Sarris’ unforgettably snappy put-downs. Sarris was far more influential than Chabrol, Truffaut and co., I’m sure, in shaping the British politique des auteurs.