The world-famous French singer Édith Piaf (1915-63) was never just a singer. This book suggests new ways of understanding her, her myth and her meanings over time at home and abroad, by proposing the notion of an 'imagined Piaf.

With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.

Roger Crittenden reveals the experiences of many of the greatest living European film editors through his warm and perceptive interviews which offer a unique insight into the art of editing - direct from masters of the craft. In their interviews the editors relate their experience to the directors they have worked with, including: Agnes Guillemot- (Godard, Truffaut, Catherine Breillat) Roberto Perpignani- (Welles, Bertolucci, Tavianni Brothers) Sylvia Ingemarsson- (Ingmar Bergman) Michal Leszczylowski- (Andrei Tarkovsky, Lukas Moodysson) Tony Lawson (Nic Roeg, Stanley Kubrick, Neil Jordan) and many more. Foreword by Walter Murch - three-time Oscar-winning Editor of 'Apocalypse Now', 'The English Patient', 'American Graffiti', 'The Conversation' and 'The Godfather Part II and III'.

This is the essential guide for anyone interested in film. Now in its second edition, the text has been completely revised and expanded to meet the needs of today's students and film enthusiasts. Some 150 key genres, movements, theories and production terms are explained and analyzed with depth and clarity. Entries include:* auteur theory* Blaxploitation* British New Wave* feminist film theory* intertextuality* method acting* pornography* Third World Cinema* Vampire movies.