Regarding the Cinema

Regarding the Cinema: Fifteen Filmmakers and Their Films is a collection of essays on some of the most important films – and film artists – of our time. The films treated are from Italy, France, Germany, the United States, Sweden, Japan and England, by directors such as Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, Michelangelo Antonioni, Woody Allen and John Schlesinger. Among the movies discussed are Tokyo Story, How We Won the War, Some Like It Hot, The Graduate, The Marriage of Maria Braun, and Il Posto.

At a time when film reviews have degenerated into mere publicity for Hollywood pictures and film scholarship has become entangled in its own discourse, these essays offer a refreshing alternative. With elegance, clarity and rigour, Bert Cardullo demonstrates that the cinema means as well as shows, and explains how international filmmakers use the resources of the medium to pursue complex, significant human goals.

Regarding the Cinema is aimed at the educated or cultivated filmgoer as well as college students and professors. In addition to the common reader, students and teachers of university-level courses in film criticism, media studies, international cinema and independent film may find this book enlightening and helpful.