The Director's Vision: A Concise Guide to the Art of 250 Great Filmmakers - Softcover

Andrew, Geoff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556523661 ISBN 13: 9781556523663

Publisher: Chicago Review Press, 1999

Synopsis

Covering the true originals of classic Hollywood, the masters of world cinema, the more distinctive contemporary filmmakers, and a number of downright eccentrics, The Director’s Vision is a guide to 250 of the all-time great visual stylists. These filmmakers are each given a single film still that exemplifies their work; the accompanying text explores how they exploit the cinematic arts—composition, color, camera angle and movement, lighting, sound, sets, and action—to convey their thematic obsessions and artistic visions. This simple premise builds into one of the most fascinating, visually arresting, and insightful of all film books. Never have the images of cinema and the words written about it been so expertly tied together. The result is an entertaining and genuinely enlightening film reference.

About this title

About the Author

Geoff Andrew is film editor of London’s Time Out magazine, programmer of London’s National Film Theatre, and one of Britain’s leading film critics. His books include Stranger than Paradise: Maverick Filmmakers in Recent American Cinema, Hollywood Gangsters, The Films of Nicholas Ray, and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy.

Reviews

This is a frustrating volume. As film editor of London's Time Out and programmer of London's National Film Theatre, Andrew is a gifted critic. He provides trenchant observations about the directors assembled here, but he's limited by his form. Arranged alphabetically by director, entries come with partial filmographies and See Also references to similar filmmakers. About a third of each entry discusses a film still that supposedly exemplifies the style of the director in question. These stills--like the directors chosen for inclusion here--are generally well considered, and Andrew should be congratulated for his coverage of African, Asian, and Central European directors. But because each entry is limited to approximately 300 words, we get only the most tantalizing of generalizations. As a result, the book succeeds as neither a reference work nor a lavish coffee-table book. It is simply too concise to be of any great value for libraries.
-Neal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1556523661
• ISBN 13: 9781556523663
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272