BFI Film Classics La Regle du jeu
Taxi Driver
Victor Perkins, Warwick University, UK.
Second Edition
Today Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) is highly regarded by fans, critics, film theorists and film-makers, who consider it to be a modern European film classic. The film's legacy is blighted however by a poor start: on original release in 1939 it was disastrously received at its Paris premiere as an offensive satire on the French bourgeoisie before the Second World War, which resulted in its being bannedby the French government. Twenty years later, Renoir released a restored version of the film - the first 'Director's Cut' - which was met with triumph at the Venice Film Festival. . $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9780851709659, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 112 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
Amy Taubin has been a film critic for The Village Voice since 1987.
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Taxi Driver is one of the major films of the 1970s, which established Martin Scorcese's reputation as a prominent American director. Robert de Niro plays Travis Bickle, Vietnam veteran and cab driver, who finally goes over the edge. Technically thrilling though it is, Taxi Driver is profoundly disturbing finding - as Amy Taubin shows, racism, misogyny and gun fetishism at the heart of American culture. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844574995, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 88 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
Metropolis
Vertigo
Second Edition
Second Edition
Thomas Elsaesser, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Charles Barr is co-writer of Stephen Frears's film Typically British: A Personal History of British Cinema.
Metropolis (1925) is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fitz Lang's extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis; its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, and its role as a database of twentieth-century imagery and ideologies. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844575015, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 96 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics Quantity
9 781844 575015
Barr documents the crucial role of screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor and explores the reasons why Vertigo has come to inspire such continuing fascination. Barr's introduction to this new edition looks at the film alongside works that have influenced, and been influenced by, Hitchcock. He discusses a hypothetical 'director's cut', where the central mystery remains hidden until the end, but posits that such a change may run contrary to the Hitchcock tradition of 'suspense over surprise'. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844574988, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 96 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
9 781844 574759
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Singin' in the Rain
Went the Day Well?
Second Edition
Second Edition
Peter Wollen, Christchurch College, UK and Geoff Andrew is Head of the Film Programme at BFI Southbank, UK.
Penelope Houston and Geoff Brown, De Montfort University, UK. Went the Day Well? is one of the most unusual pictures Ealing Studios produced, a distinctly unsentimental war film made in the darkest days of World War II, and nothing like the loveable comedies that later became the Ealing trademark. This book offers an attractive and astute view of British cinema in its heyday. Brown discusses the non-English qualities of the film's narrative, and the extent to which Cavalcanti brought a European sensibility to the film's very English setting. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844575008, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 96 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
Forty years after its release, Singin' in the Rain remains one of the best loved films ever made. Peter Wollen has finally done justice to this landmark film. In a brilliant shot-by-shot analysis of the famous title number, illustrated by speciallyproduced frame stills, he shows how skilfully dance and musical elements are woven into the narrative. However, with Hollywood menaced by McCarhtyism, the Popular Front ethos in which the film was conceived could not long survive. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844575145, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 88 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
9 781844 575145
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Wizard of Oz
Eric Smoodin, University of California, USA.
Second edition
Snow White has been re-evaluated along a number of lines since its heralded release in the late 1930s. Disney's interpretation of the doomed princess has reached out to a number of audiences, including the general viewing public, film historians and scholars, film technicians and animators, and educational and child welfare professionals. Smoodin analyses the film's significance amongst all these groups within their related theoretical and practical contexts, bringing home why this Disney first will remain a first point of call for so many for a long time into the foreseeable future. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844574759, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 112 pages Palgrave Macmillan BFI Film Classics
Salman Rushdie is the author of award-winning novel Midnight's Children.
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Rushdie rejects the conventional view that its fantasy of escape from reality ends with a comforting return to home. On the contrary, it is a film that speaks to the exile. The Wizard of Oz shows that imagination can become reality, that there is no such place like home, or rather that the only home is the one we make for ourselves. Rushdie's brilliant insights into a film more often seen than written about are rounded off with a new short story, At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers, about the day when Dorothy's red shoes are knocked down to $15,000 at a sale of MGM props. $24.95 Pb, ISBN 9781844575169, NZRP$32.95 Publish September 2012, 80 pages Palgrave Macmillan Quantity BFI Film Classics