A Love Of Film: An Intimate Affair with the Poetry and Hardware of Making Movies

A Love of Film is something shared by most of us, whether or not we admit or recognize it. In film, there is something of each of the arts. Perhaps that’s why it so indelibly impresses us. There’s something for everyone. This book explores the relationship between the aesthetic and the technical–the poetry and the hardware of making movies–in a way that’s both enlightening and entertaining. It deals as well with the still unanswered mysteries of this extraordinary medium. Is the darkness of today’s color films due only to the nature of their stories or to something deeper? How did “Casablanca’s” many allusions lead to the way we watch movies today? A Love of Film examines why we respond to movie characters as we do, how we “coauthor” the films we see, and the link between memories, dreams, and movies. It references many memorable performances, the “best” of modern directors, and more than 150 films. Though it deals with the role of writing, shooting, and editing in this collaborative process, and with the preeminence of performance and the deification of directors, the book is most of all about a deep affection for the cinema. Its intent, in enlarging our understanding of moviemaking, is to make watching movies a more personal and enjoyable experience, as it has been for the author.