Cinema Today - Softcover

Buscombe, Edward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714845167 ISBN 13: 9780714845166

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2005

Synopsis

A third of the entire history of cinema is represented by films produced from 1970 onwards. Cinema Today explores this history, what may be referred to as the Third Age of world cinema, and the films, people and technologies which have shaped its development. The work of film-makers who have made a significant contribution to the film industry during this period is also highlighted and discussed.

Cinema Today begins by examining the moment at which the modern blockbuster was born. In the early 1970s a string of spectacularly successful films such as MASH (1970), The Godfather (1972) and Jaws (1975) transformed the economic climate of Hollywood and the power relationship within it. The first half of the book looks at New Hollywood and explores its recent and continued development through film genres including Crime, Science Fiction, Horror and Comedy. The book identifies how social and economic change influenced the development of films, assesses the impact of emerging new waves of cinema on Hollywood and Hollywood's reaction to these changes. Influential directors such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, George Lucas, Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg are all featured in these chapters along with their films.

We then move onto the world stage where Edward Buscombe explores the unique style of film output from Australasia, Africa, India, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America. Specific film genres and trends of these regions are highlighted and discussed in relation to the social and economic climate of the time. Many of these film industries, such as French, Indian and Japanese, are significant centres of world production. In these chapters, Buscombe examines the Bollywood cinema of India, art house cinema of France, the British comedy, Japanese crime films and Mexican horror films. The films of Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Akira Kurosawa, Roman Polanski, Luc Besson, Mike Leigh, Ousmane Sembène and Chen Kaige are just an example of the range of work discussed.

With a comprehensive directors' filmography, a bibliography, chronology and index at the back of the book, Cinema Today is an invaluable reference tool.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Buscombe is a leading authority on cinema, having lectured and written on film for over 30 years. Formerly Head of Publishing at the British Film Institute, Buscombe is a regular contributor to film journals and has written several books.

From Publishers Weekly

Film scholar Buscombe (The Searchers) analyzes world cinema since 1970 with welcome intelligence and thorough knowledge in a lavishly produced book that should satisfy oglers and thinkers alike. Not surprisingly, he begins his take on modern cinema in 1970, after studio-made extravaganzas like Hello, Dolly! had disappointed an increasingly young audience while the low-budget, youth-oriented road movie Easy Rider became a hit and changed Hollywood's thinking about what makes a successful film. Owing to the commanding influence of American movies across the world, Buscombe devotes half of the book to American films. Genre chapters are solid, with some surprises, like his dark view that horror films are being consumed by their self-reflexiveness. Most enlightening are Buscombe's surveys of international cinema, as he examines various countries' film industries in terms of their financial health, interaction with their governments and their role as cultural representatives. A visual delight, the book presents stills ranging from the iconic (e.g., Pierce Brosnan as Bond cruising on a motorcycle with a gorgeous Michelle Yeoh clutching onto him in Tomorrow Never Dies) to the lesser-known (including a moving shot of Dirk Bogarde examining the wound on the arm of Charlotte Rampling in 1974's The Night Porter). Any book that ignites fresh thoughts about old movies and also presents photos of gory monsters and half-naked women does justice to the universal art form of sight and sound.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0714845167
• ISBN 13: 9780714845166
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 512