Critically surveys the films of Tony Richardson, one of Britain’s most inventive directors of stage and screen.

This book offers an opportunity to reconsider the films of the British New Wave in the light of forty years of heated debate. By eschewing the usual tendency to view films like A Kind of Loving and The Entertainer collectively and include them in broader debates about class, gender, and ideology, this book presents a new and innovative look at this famous cycle of British films. For each film, a re-distribution of existing critical emphasis also allows the problematic relationship between these films and the question of realism to be reconsidered. Drawing upon existing sources and returning to long-standing and unchallenged assumptions about these films, this book offers the opportunity for the reader to return to the British New Wave and decide for themselves where they stand in relation to the films.

Fred Zinnemann, celebrated director of such classic films as High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and A Man for All Seasons, is studied here in a book-length work for the first time. Zinnemann’s fifty-year career includes twenty-two feature films, which are characterized by an unshakable belief in human dignity, a preoccupation with moral and social issues, a warm and sympathetic treatment of character, and consummate technical artistry. In discussing such issues as the role of Zinnemann’s documentary aesthetic throughout his career, the relationship between his life and his art, his use and construction of history, and the central importance of women characters in his films, The Films of Fred Zinnemann lends new perspectives to the work of a major filmmaker and makes a significant contribution to the study of American cinema.

Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, Smith will only vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” has long been considered a masterpiece on both the page and the silver screen. Adapted for film by Sillitoe himself in 1962, it became an instant classic of British New Wave cinema. In “Uncle Ernest,” a middle-aged furniture upholsterer traumatized in World War II, now leads a lonely life. His wife has left him, his brothers have moved away, and the townsfolk treat him as if he were a ghost. When the old man finally finds companionship with two young girls whom he enjoys buying pastries for at a café, the local authorities find his behavior morally suspect. “Mr. Raynor the School Teacher” delves into a different kind of isolation—that of a voyeuristic teacher who fantasizes constantly about the women who work in a draper’s shop across the street. When his students distract him from his lustful daydreams, Mr. Raynor becomes violent. The six stories that follow in this iconic collection continue to cement Alan Sillitoe’s reputation as one of Britain’s foremost storytellers, and a champion of the condemned, the oppressed, and the overlooked. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.

From the landmark films of Tony Richardson to the untimely death of Natasha Richardson – this is the saga of one of the greatest dynasties in British film and theatre. In 1928, at the end of a production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, Laurence Olivier strode to the front of the stage to hush the audience and announced, pointing at his co-star Michael Redgrave, 'Tonight a great actress has been born. Laertes has a daughter.' He meant Vanessa Redgrave. That is where this dramatic book’s story begins. It concludes in 2009, with the sudden and tragic death in a skiing accident of Vanessa’s daughter Natasha Richardson – and further family sorrow soon to follow with the deaths of both Corin and Lynn Redgrave. The story of this amazing family is explosive throughout - from the tangled private life of Tony Richardson, Natasha’s father, who directed major films such as Look back in Anger, to Vanessa and Corin’s complicated involvement with the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, to the emergence of a fourth generation of fine actors with Natasha and Joely.? There is truly never a dull moment – but plenty of scandal, melodrama, tragedy and intrigue – in the story of this remarkable dynasty, whose contribution to British drama and film has been immense.

The Technique of Film & Video Editing provides a detailed, precise look at the artistic and aesthetic principles and practices of editing for both picture and sound. Analyses of photographs from dozens of classic and contemporary films and videos provide a sound basis for the professional filmmaker and student editor. This book puts into context the storytelling choices an editor will have to make against a background of theory, history, and practice. This new edition has been updated to include the latest advances in digital video and nonlinear editing and explores the new trend of documentary as mainstream entertainment, using films such as "Farenheit 9/11" and "The Fog of War" as examples.

George Toles's Curtains of Light explores the ways in which various kinds of theatrical space in film engage with the film reality adjacent to them, and alter our understanding of the cinematic real. Film art is a dialogue between the world created for a film narrative and theatre spaces that confront it across the shadowline. This book provides a new way of thinking about film's relation to theatre, and challenges old conceptions of how cinema needs to escape the theatrical, or rise above it. Toles offers elegantly written and jargon-free readings of a rich variety of films, spanning the distance from D.W. Griffith's True Heart Susie up to David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. The methodology is predominantly aesthetic, but informed by Toles's decades of experience as a professional theatre director. Among the many topics covered are audition scenes, stage deaths on film, the close up and theatrical aloneness in film, eloquent objects, and characters who alternate between directing and playacting for each other, with tragic consequences. Curtains of Light would be an extremely useful introductory text for university students studying the relationship of cinema to theatre.