Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Listed after each chapter title are just some of the films/film makers /studios/actors featured in the sidebars for each section
• Part 1 Classic Hollywood Cinema
• Introduction
• The Rise of the American Film Industry
• The Birth of a Nation
• Intolerance
• Sunrise
• King Kong
• The Studios
• Paramount
• MGM
• Warner Bros
• Columbia
• 20th Century Fox
• RKO
• Universal Stars
• Classical Hollywood Narrative
• Part 2 Technology
• Introduction
• Sound
• Colour - She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
• Deep Focus - The Best Years of Our Lives, La Regle du jeu
• Lighting -Widescreen Rebel Without a Cause
• Cameras
• Alternative Production
• Formats
• Editing
• The 'New' Technologies - Titanic, The Mask, Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• Interactive Entertainments
• Virtual Reality
• Part 3 National Cinema and Film Movements
• German Expressionism and New German Cinema
• Soviet Cinema
• The Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible Part 1
• Italian Neo-Realism
• The French Nouvelle Vague
• A bout de souffle, Les Quatre cents coups
• The British Film Industry
• The Lavender Hill Mob
• The Quatermass Experiment, Room at the Top
• Part 4 Alternatives to Classic Hollywood
• Early Cinema
• After Brighton
• The Great Train Robbery
• The Lonedale Operator
• New Hollywood
• Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction
• Art Cinema
• Alice in den Stauml;dten, L'Anneacute;e derniere agrave; Marienbad, L'avventura, East Asian Cinema, Late Spring, Yellow Earth, Sisters of the Gion
• Avant-Garde and Counter-Cinema
• Un Chien Andalou, Vent d'est, Privilege
• Third World and Postcolonial Cinema Xala Sankofa
• Hindi Cinema
• Part 5 Genre
• History Of Genre Criticism
• The Western
• My Darling Clementine, Unforgiven
• Melodrama
• Gaslight, Written on the Wind
• All That Heaven Allows
• Crime
• Gangsters, Detectives and Suspense Film
• Film Noir
• Double Indemnity, Homicide, Secret Beyond the Door
• Science Fiction and Horror
• Psycho, Alien, Dead Ringers, Star Wars
• The Musical
• Meet Me in
• The Teenpic
• Grease, Gummo, Rebel Without a Cause
• Comedy
• Lover Come Back, Annie Hall, The Patsy
• Action-Adventure
• Part 6 Authorship and Cinema
• Authorship and Art Cinema
• The 'politique des auteurs'
• The Auteur Theory
• Auteurism in Britain
• Structuralism and Auteur Study
• Auteurism After Structuralism
• Auteurism in the 1990s
• Part 7 Theoretical Frameworks
• Looking at Film
• Three Colours: White, The Graduate
• Structuralism and its Aftermaths
• Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Manhunter, Blue Velvet, Blade Runner, Total Recall
• Feminist Film Theory
• Film Theory and Spectatorship
• Gone With the Wind, Queen Christina
• Contributors

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This guide, prepared by the British Film Institute and published in Britain in 1985, has much to recommend it. Chapters on film history and theory, stars, and ``authorship'' offer intelligent discussion and analysis. Stills are carefully chosen and an extensive filmography includes detailed plot synopses, lacking in many film reference books. However, the audience for this book may prove small. In its discussion of film theory (in which an inordinate amount of space is given to structuralism), The Cinema Book delves far more deeply than most texts and will likely leave many students (and teachers) in the dark. Recommended as a supplemental text for larger collections. Thomas Wiener, formerly with `` American Film, '' Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Organized topically rather than chronologically, this comprehensive work provides a fresh perspective over the history of cinema and cinema studies. The European authors show European sensibility and approach in treating the international history of cinema--both this volume's strength and its weakness. It is intended for a British audience: films are referred to and indexed under their European release titles, and nowhere cross-indexed by their US titles. This use of non-US titles makes the book difficult for inexperienced researchers, but it complements nicely such US publications as David Bordwell's Film Art: An Introduction (5th ed., 1997) or David A. Cook's A History of Narrative Cinema (CH, Jun'82; 3rd ed., 1996). It marries history and theory, particularly in the gray boxes located throughout the text, which, while not clearly labeled, provide theoretical approaches to various films. This source provides an unrivaled overview of the history of British cinema appropriate for any library collecting in the liberal arts and gives insight into British perspectives on US and world cinema that would be useful to advanced researchers. K. A. Burke New York University

Booklist Review

An absence of lavish color photographs and a liberal sprinkling of phrases such as politiques des auteurs and mise en scene make clear that this book is about film, not movies. The text, written by a group of British film critics, is organized thematically around various wide-ranging topics including ``Authorship and Cinema'' and ``Genre.'' A short history of the industry illustrates the differing studio styles and the advances of film technology. Subsequent sections provide expansive film criticism and theory, along with a history of narrative systems how the film is assembled and the story told. The Cinema Book is ruthlessly objective if sometimes overly technical. The sections tend to overlap, with discussions of key films reappearing in different places. The limited readability and academic tone make this volume difficult to tackle from cover to cover, but there is a wealth of information here. Fortunately, a thorough index, an elaborate system of cross-references, and an appendix that summarizes films mentioned in the text make the book valuable as a reference source. PLR. 791.43 Moving-pictures [CIP] 86-42840