The rebirth of suspense

This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called “slow cinema.”

The shining

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) is both a successful mainstream horror film and an esoteric object for cult audiences who are convinced that the film means something totally different. This book investigates what has made The Shining a key cult film while also addressing the range of mea...

The skillful huntsman

The stardom film

Since the movie industry’s earliest days, Hollywood has mythologized itself through stories of stardom. In the first book to focus exclusively on these modern fairy tales, Karen McNally traces the history of this genre from silent cinema to contemporary film and television to show its significanc...

The utopia of film

Exploring the work of three visionary auteurs deeply invested in the political possibilities of film.

The white ribbon

Explores Haneke's historically complex film as a reflection on purity, ideology, violence, and child-rearing.White ribbons and black pedagogy - Michael Haneke's award-winning film The White Ribbon (2009) is a multilayered reflection on purity, ideology, violence, and child rearing. In this tense ...

Through a noir lens

Sheri Chinen Biesen explores how the dark cinematic noir style has evolved across eras, from classic Hollywood to present-day streaming services.

Toni erdmann

The first in-depth analysis of Maren Ade's acclaimed contemporary classic, a generational tug-of-war about the meaning of life, work, and death.Maren Ade's tragicomedy Toni Erdmann, a 2016 Cannes sensation and Oscar nominee, is an internationally acclaimed classic of recent German cinema. By turn...

Trash cinema

This volume explores the lower reaches of cinema and its paradoxical appeal. It looks at films from the B-movies of the 1930s to the mockbusters of today, and from the New York underground to the genre variations of Turkey's Yesilçam studios (and their YouTube afterlife). Critically examining the...

Voyages of discovery

Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Frederick Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s.

Warning shadows

A view of a long-neglected classic of Weimar cinema - now restored and widely available - as both a gripping narrative of infidelity and jealousy and a film inherently about film.Artur Robison's Warning Shadows - in German simply Schatten, shadows - premiered in 1923 to critical acclaim. This sto...

When movies were theater

There was a time when seeing a movie meant more than seeing a film. The theater itself shaped the very perception of events on screen. This multilayered history tells the story of American film through the evolution of theater architecture and the surprisingly varied ways movies were shown, rangi...

Wings of desire

A guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that la...

Words on screen

A poetic investigation into the many ways that the written word is used in cinema

“keep ’em in the east”

Richard Koszarski chronicles the compelling and often surprising origins of New York’s postwar film renaissance. He examines the social, cultural, and economic forces that shaped New York filmmaking, from city politics to union regulations