With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This seminal text analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language used by these artists from divergent cultures. The new edition updates Schrader’s theoretical framework and extends his theory to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), among others. This key work by one of our most searching directors and writers is widely cited and used in film and art classes. With evocative prose and nimble associations, Schrader consistently urges readers and viewers alike to keep exploring the world of the art film.

Ozu's Tokyo Story is generally regarded as one of the finest films ever made. Universal in its appeal, it is also considered to be 'particularly Japanese'. Exploring its universality and cultural specificity, this collection of specially commissioned essays demonstrates the multiple planes on which the film may be appreciated. The introduction outlines Ozu's career as both a contract director of a major studio and as a singular figure in Japanese film history, and also analyses the director's cinematic style, particularly his narrative strategies and spatial compositions. Other essays situate Ozu's cinema in its relationship to Hollywood film-making: his relationship to aspects of Japanese tradition, situating the film within artistic modes, religious systems and beliefs, and socio-cultural and familial formations. Also included is an analysis of how Ozu has been misunderstood in Western criticism.

Although Robert Bresson is widely regarded by movie critics and students of the cinema as one of the greatest directors of the twentieth century, his films are largely unknown and are rarely shown in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, Susan Sontag has called Bresson "the master of the reflective mode in film."Martin Scorsese suggested that a young filmmaker should ask: "Is it as tough as Bresson?... Is Ýmeaning ̈ as ruthlessly pared down, as direct, as unflinching in its gaze at aspects of life I might feel more comfortable ignoring?" Questions that every reader of this book and every viewer of Bresson's films will also ask.Joseph Cunneen's book, now in paperback, introduces Bresson's movies to a broader audience, assesses thirteen of his most significant films in the context of detailed plot summaries, vivid descriptions of characters and settings, and perceptive, jargon-free insights into the director's execution, intention, and technique. Each of these films in its own way illustrates what Joseph Cunneen calls Bresson's "spiritual style." Though not necessarily focused on the explicitly religious, they illustrate two complementary principles: on the negative side, the rejection of what the director called "photographed theater" with its artificiality and dependence on celebrity performers. On the more positive side, as Bresson himself expressed it, the conviction that, "The supernatural is only the real rendered more precise; real things seen close up."

A director reveals the original inspirations for his films, their history, his methods of work, and the problems of visual creativity

Offers the first comprehensive academic text to explore Paul Schrader's film career through analysis of his directing, screenwriting, and film criticismContains a chapter-length interview, in which Schrader examines the arc of his career for the first time and revises previous statements about filmmaking and film criticismProvides a valuable update to previous texts on SchraderConsiders Schrader's overlooked films and provides new insight into their connections with Schrader's better known filmsContains chapters on Schrader's work since 2008, the publication date of the last book on his filmmakingPaul Schrader's unique relationship to the role of the author (as screenwriter, director and critic) has long informed his cinema, and raises complicated questions about the definition of the auteur. This volume of essays - one of the first collections to assess Schrader's contributions to directing, screenwriting and criticism - includes the first original appraisals of his much-lauded masterpiece First Reformed (2017), as well as a chapter-length interview with Schrader himself, conducted by the editors. Providing a comprehensive exploration of his groundbreaking achievements in cinema, the book considers Schrader's more overlooked films and provides new insights to their connection with his celebrated work in direction and screenwriting such as Taxi Driver (1976), Cat People (1982) and The Comfort of Strangers (1990).

By Amos Vogel. Foreword by Scott MacDonald.

Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite—one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.