Novelist and critic Kim Newman assesses the horror noir Cat People (1943), produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. This important and influential film is considered in the light of its place in film history and as a work of ambitious horror. The new edition includes a postscript about the sequel, The Curse of the Cat People.

Taking the production history into account, Prawer ultimately foregrounds the cultural and aesthetic components of the film that combine to such powerful effect. This second edition features a new foreword by Brad Prager and original cover artwork by Matt Brand.

Made at the height of the Cold War and Hollywood's anticommunist purges, director Fred Zinnemann, writer Daniel Taradash and producer Buddy Adler defied military and industry pressure to censor the material. Exploring the film's full production history and drawing upon archival documents and rare interviews with cast and crew, J.

A visually stunning and heartfelt riposte to the emotional sterility of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Douglas Trumbull's eco-themed Silent Running (1972) became one of the defining science-fiction films of the seventies.

A heist thriller with a dazzling twist in the tail, this film "The Usual Suspects" has seen its reputation grow until it is now a major cult movie. Ernest Larsen examines the film's sophistcated narrative structure and the new spin it puts on an old genre.

A critical examination of the long established tradition of adapting classic novels to film or TV screen. It is historically wide-ranging, encompassing novelists from Jane Austen to Michael Ondaatje.

This re-evaluation of what has until now been seen as the most critically lacklustre period of the British film history covers a variety of genres, such as B-movies, war films, women's pictures and theatrical adaptations, as well as social issues which affect film-making, such as censorship.

A study that sets the film "The Big Lebowski" into the context of 1990s Hollywood cinema, anatomized for its witty relationship with the classics it satirizes, and discusses in terms of its key theme: the hopeless flailing of ridiculously unmanly men in the world of discombobulated, mixed-up, or put-on identities that is Los Angeles.

The career of the film-maker Ken Loach embraces both the cinema and television, and has included "Cathy Come Home", "Kes", and the films "Riff-Raff", "Raining Stones" and "Land and Freedom", which won major continental awards. This book presents an exploration of his work.

This book explores the possibility that cinema can challenge our contemporary nihilism and restore belief in new transformative possibilities for life.

Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth, this is an examination of the personal concerns which Howard Hawks brought to his films. Hawks's discussion of his working methods in this frequently irreverent book represents a master class in the practical art of film direction.

"Sunrise" was a lavish production, famous for its specially constructed sets and one of Hollywood's most ambitious undertakings. Fischer's book is a model of film analysis, locating "Sunrise" in a range of historical, aesthetic and philosophical contexts. In the BFI FILM CLASSICS series.

A medieval allegory of faith and doubt, "The Seventh Seal" contains the horrors of witch-burnings and plague, yet also features flashes of peace and joy. Each volume in the "BFI Film Classics" series contains a personal commentary on the film, a brief production history and a detailed filmography.

This work suggests that Humphrey Jennings' re-enacted documentary about the London Blitz, "Fires Were Started", is an understated propaganda masterpiece. It provides an account of how Jennings recaptured the reality of the Blitz for his cumbersome camera through a process of meticulous research.

In "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949), Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) schemes and murders his way to a dukedom. This title looks into the turbulent personalities that formed the complex style of this film to unravel the fusion of cynicism, contempt, sparkling wit and philosophical curiosity.

The life of the very private and media-shy Ella Fitzgerald has long been shrouded in a mixture of half-truths and fiction. What emerges in Stuart Nicholson's groundbreaking biography is a remarkable s

This work contains over 200 entries on film, actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, critics, film industry, film movements and festivals covering German-speaking cinema from the 1890s to the popular comedies of the 1990s. Articles consider emigre directors, film politics and Nazi cinema.

After making an initial impact with his first film "Les 400 Coups", the French film director Francois Truffaut went on to make 23 films in 26 years. This appraisal of his work provides a socio-political contextualization, and gives an overview of his films and film-making methods.

When people think of film stars, they think of Hollywood. Yet, second only to America, French cinema has produced the most substantial galaxy of stars to achieve world fame in their national films.

In Shooting 007, beloved cameraman and director of photography Alec Mills, a veteran of seven James Bond movies, tells the inside story of his twenty years of filming cinema's most famous secret agent.

Henri Langlois began collecting prints of films in the 1920s, and in 1935 he founded the Cinematheque Francaise, the legendary film library and screening room in Paris. This is an analysis of Henri Langlois, his passion for films, and his contribution to film history.