Broken down into three sections of sorts (including an entire introduction breaking down the rhetoric within John Ford’s cinema which is easily one of the more exciting “introductions” I’ve read in my life), Perez discusses the broader rhetoric surrounding both “Cinematic Tropes” as well as “Melodrama and Film Technique,” with each section broken down into various smaller, almost bite-sized discussions involving things from Rosebud in Citizen Kane to what’s this writer’s favorite section, a small piece on the films of Alfred Hitchcock entitled The Devil’s Point Of View. No stone is left unturned here, making this an absolute must-own for that cinephile in your life who just can’t turn off TCM.Īnother release for that cinephile in your life who won’t shut up about the latest film added to MUBI this week, The Eloquent Screen may be sitting here in the middle of the pack but I’d argue that very few releases here on this list are as truly important as this new collection of essays from writer Gilberto Perez. Looking at both the director’s life and work as well as the larger cultural impact each of those things had on the world around him, Kobal proves to be one of the more accomplished film scholars of his generation, if the back catalog of over 30 books wasn’t enough already.
Written by the late historian John Kobal, this his final manuscript written before his death in 1991 and just now published by University Press of Mississippi, The Lost World of DeMille takes a thoughtful and deep look into the life and times of the iconic filmmaker, telling the story of his indoctrination into the world of filmmaking while watching a film being shot as a child all the way through the production of The Ten Commandments right before his death some three years later in 1959, all the while using archival materials and gorgeous photographs to add even more context to what is one of the more fully realized biographies you’ll read in 2019. Not a book for every film watcher (your friend whose only Criterions are the Wes Anderson films and Chasing Amy probably won’t get much out of this) but for any film lover in or freshly out of school may just have their life changed with this little diddy.įar from a “little diddy” is this incredible, truly impressive look at filmmaker Cecil B. Figures like Gilles Deleuze and Slavoj Zizek find some of their most legendary essays critically discussed throughout this dense and thought-provoking reader, with essays ranging from Giorgio Agamben’s “Notes On Gesture” to Jacques Ranciere’s incredible, essential discussion on the works of Fritz Lang entitled “From One Manhunt To Another.”ĭespite its lofty, scholarly ideas, this is an essential piece of editing as it invites new cinephiles to think about large ideas in ways that don’t feel stiff like they would within a school-like context, and allows these ideas to interplay with one another in a thoughtful manner. Edited by Christopher Kul-Want, Philosophers on Film is an exciting collection of works from various legendary thinkers, ranging from Alain Badiou to Jean Baudrillard, finding these intellectuals interacting with cinema in ways only they truly could. I had previously mentioned that the Jean Painleve book was a “heady” read, but it looks like a tabloid rag in comparison to this essential, yet admittedly very niche collection of essays.
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