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More than 2.000 books in catalogue from the main scholars in the fields of theology, philosophy, and religious studies. Among our series: «Biblioteca di teologia contemporanea»; «Giornale di teologia»; and the International journal Concilium.
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From a little before ten years of age Brian McFarlane became addicted to stories told on the screen, and the mere fact that he had difficulty in getting to see the films he wanted - or any for that matter - only made them seem more alluring. But it wasn't just seeing the films that mattered: he also wanted, and quite soon needed, to be writing about them and these obsessions have been part of his life for the next sixty-odd years. Real and reel is a light-hearted and but deeply felt account of a lifetime's addiction. It is one particular writer and critic's story, but it will strike sparks among many others. Though many other interests have kept Brian McFarlane's life lively, nothing else has exerted such a long-standing grip on the author's imagination as film. Editor of the Encyclopaedia of British Cinema, co-editor of Manchester University Press's British Film Makers series, and author of over a dozen critical works on film and adaptation, Brian McFarlane's autobiographical Real and reel can also be read as a biography of the subject of Film Studies itself. ;
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Richard Lester is of the most significant yet misunderstood directors of the post-war era. Indelibly associated with the Beatles and the 'swinging Sixties' because of his direction of A Hard Day's Night and Help and his joyous sex comedy The Knack, Lester has tended to be categorised as a modish director whose heyday passed when that decade's optimism slid into disillusionment and violence. This book offers a critical appreciation and reappraisal of his work, arguing that it had much greater depth and variety than he has been given credit for. His versatility encompasses the Brechtian anti-heroics of How I Won the War; the surreal nuclear comedy of The Bed-Sitting Room and the swashbuckling adventure of The Musketeers films. He has even, in his instinctively iconoclastic manner, cut Superman down to size. The book should win new admirers for a director with a gift of making movies whose visual wit and imaginative imagery reveal an intelligent and enquiring scepticism about heroes and society. Including comments from Lester himself and illustrations from his own private collection, the book is a must for film scholars and enthusiasts alike. ;
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With well over 6,300 articles, including over 500 new entries, this fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of British Film is a fully updated invaluable reference guide to the British film industry. It is the most authoritative volume yet, stretching from the inception of the industry to the present day, with detailed listings of the producers, directors, actors and studios behind a century or so of great British cinema. Brian McFarlane's meticulously researched guide is the definitive companion for anyone interested in the world of film. Previous editions have sold many thousands of copies and this fourth edition will be an essential work of reference for enthusiasts interested in the history of British cinema, and for universities and libraries.
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This is the first book-length study of the most prolific and most critically acclaimed director working in British cinema today. Michael Winterbottom has also established himself, and his company, Revolution Films, as a dynamic force in world cinema. No other British director can claim such an impressive body of work in such a variety of genres, from road movie to literary adaptation, from musical to sex film, to stories of contemporary political significance. The authors of this book use a range of critical approaches to analyse the filmmaker's eclectic interests in cinema and the world at large. With this in mind, the realist elements of such films as Welcome to Sarajevo are examined in the light of a long history of cinema's dealings with realism, as far back as post-war Italian neo-realist filmmaking; whereas Jude and The claim are approached as both literary adaptations (a continuing strand in British cinema history) and examples of other reworked genres (the road movie, the western). This lively study of his work, written in a wholly accessible style, will engage all those who have followed his career as well as those with a wide-ranging interest in British cinema. ;
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This is the first book-length study of the most prolific and most critically acclaimed director working in British cinema today. Michael Winterbottom has also established himself, and his company, Revolution Films, as a dynamic force in world cinema. No other British director can claim such an impressive body of work in such a variety of genres, from road movie to literary adaptation, from musical to sex film, to stories of contemporary political significance. The authors of this book use a range of critical approaches to analyse the filmmaker's eclectic interests in cinema and the world at large. With this in mind, the realist elements of such films as Welcome to Sarajevo are examined in the light of a long history of cinema's dealings with realism, as far back as post-war Italian neo-realist filmmaking; whereas Jude and The claim are approached as both literary adaptations (a continuing strand in British cinema history) and examples of other reworked genres (the road movie, the western). This lively study of his work, written in a wholly accessible style, will engage all those who have followed his career as well as those with a wide-ranging interest in British cinema.
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This is the first comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. Ryall sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, examining the artistic and cultural influences which shaped his films. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, but his career faltered during the 1930s. However, the success of Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939), based on plays by George Bernard Shaw and Terence Rattigan, together with his significant contributions to wartime British cinema, re-established him as a leading British film maker. Asquith's post-war career includes several pictures in collaboration with Terence Rattigan, and the definitive adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1951), but his versatility is demonstrated in a number of modest genre films including The Woman in Question (1950), The Young Lovers (1954) and Orders to Kill (1958). ;
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Bruce Babington analyses the achievement of one of the central partnerships in British film history, the screenwriters of famous films by Hitchcock and Carol Reed, who became the producer-writer-directors of a succession of famous and well-loved films including Millions Like Us, Two Thousand Women, Waterloo Road, The Rake's Progress, I See a Dark Stranger, The Blue Lagoon and The Happiest Days of Your Life. This study of the pair is notable both for its contextualising of them within English and British culture over four decades, including British cinema's 'golden age' of the war and immediate post-war years, and for its close reading of films that have been critically neglected, despite their popularity. Scholarly but not pedantic, the book shows its subjects to be not ordinary mainstream practitioners but deceptively serious filmmakers registering the 'ideological weather' of wartime and post-war Britain in engaging and creative ways. ;
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Tony Richardson was a key figure in British cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Having established himself in the theatre with the first production of John Osborne's landmark play Look Back in Anger, he became a central director in the New Wave, bringing greater realism to British cinema. He went on to make some of the most significant films of the 1960s including the multi Oscar-winning Tom Jones. This detailed and authoritative account of Richardson's career provides a reassessment of his achievements. As well as looking at his best known films, it considers neglected works such as Ned Kelly and Joseph Andrews, illustrating how Richardson remained a champion of the socially marginalised. In mapping out his life and work, from the English Stage Company to his final films in America, Shail re-establishes Richardson's at the front rank of British film directors, confirming his contribution to a period of dynamic change in British culture. ;
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This book traces the career of Roy Ward Baker, one of the great survivors of the British film and television industry. He directed the landmark British film Morning Departure (1949), worked at Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood in the early 1950s where he directed Marilyn Monroe's 'breakthrough' film (Don't Bother to Knock), and followed this with a succession of fine films for Rank, culminating in the best version of the Titanic disaster, A Night to Remember in 1958. Yet within three years he was unable to secure a job in the British film industry and he moved to television series such as The Avengers, The Saint and Minder. Later Baker re-emerged as a major director of science-fiction (Quatermass and the Pit) and horror films (Asylum). Geoff Mayer provides an industrial and aesthetic context in which to understand the interrelationship between a skilled classical director and the transformation of the British film industry in the 1950s. ;
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Humphrey Jennings has been described as the only real poet that British cinema has produced. His documentary films are remarkable records of Britain at peace and war, and his range of representational approaches transcended accepted notions of wartime propaganda and revised the strict codes of British documentary film of the 1930s and 1940s. Poet, propagandist, surrealist and documentary filmmaker - Jennings' work embodies an outstanding mix of startling apprehension, personal expression and representational innovation. This book carefully examines and expertly explains the central components of Jennings' most significant films, and considers the relevance of his filmmaking to British cinema and contemporary experience. Films analysed include Spare Time, Words for Battle, Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started, The Silent Village, A Diary for Timothy and Family Portrait. ;
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This book gives detailed and original critical readings of all eleven of Derek Jarman's feature-length films, arguing that he occupies a major and influential place in European and world cinema rather than merely being a cult figure. It places particular emphasis on the importance of Renaissance art and literature for Jarman, and emphasises his interest in Jungian psychology. Wymer shows how Jarman used his films to take his audience with him on an inner journey in search of the self, whilst remaining fully aware of the dangers of such a journey. Making substantial use of Jarman's unpublished papers as well as all his published works, Wymer argues that the films are orientated towards a much wider audience than is often supposed. They are addressed to anyone, of whatever gender or sexuality, who is prepared to go on a journey in search of him or her self and to become Jarman's accomplice in 'the dream world of the soul'. ;
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'A rule of mine is this', said William Goldman in 1983, 'there are always three hot directors and one of them is always David Lean.' One of the best known and most admired of British film makers, David Lean had a directorial career that spanned five decades and encompassed everything from the intimate black-and-white romance of Brief Encounter (1945) to the spectacular Technicolor epic of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). This book offers comprehensive coverage of every feature film directed by Lean, yielding new insights on the established classics of his career as well as its lesser-known treasures. Its analysis prioritises questions of gender and emphasises the often-overlooked but highly significant recurrence of female-centred narratives throughout Lean's career. Drawing extensively on archival historical materials while also presenting nuanced close readings of individual films, David Lean offers a fascinating and original account of the work of a remarkable British film maker. ;
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Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures. ;
