Here is some good news concerning the Tag Gallagher essay on Sirk I mentioned a few days ago. It is "reprinted,” as it were, at Senses of Cinema, the Australia-based website that is the notable equivalent of Cahiers du cinema. The article comes with numerous luscious frame captures, and some new info in a footnote. Mr. Gallagher has also thoroughly updated his John Ford book as an e-book, now called John Ford: Himself and HIs Movies, with a multitude of new illustrations, and film-by-film analyses. The author has also revised and updated his Rossellini book in a third edition.
Meanwhile, I should also mention Charles Barr’s book Hitchcock: Lost and Found, written with Alain Kerzoncuf (University of Kentucky), which surveys an aspect of Hitchcock work that hasn’t previously received much attention. Of special interest is Hitchcock’s years with the director Graham Cutts from the silent era, in which the authors provide photographic evidence of his influence on Cutts or the films, especially an early foreshadowing of an effect in Marnie. But the book also looks at films he produced or is credited with writing but not directing, as well as edited documentaries and war effort dramas, and even a filmed introduction that he sent to a British film society that was showing Psycho and several other of his films.
That leads in turn to The Lost Hitchcocks, by John William Law (an e-book from Aplomb Publishing). This is a chronicle of projects that Hitchcock might have made or completed, from Titanic in the ‘40s to The Short Night in the ’70s, among many others. Mr. Law previously published Hitchcock: The Icon Years, about Hitchcock’s films after Psycho.
Another name I’d like to add to the Third Wave of film writers I like is Leon Hunt. He first came to my attention in the last physical issue of Movie, with a massive account of Vincent Price, taking him seriously. Since then he has written an enjoyable monograph on Danger: Diabolik for the Cultographies series, Kung Fu Cult Masters, Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television (as one of the editors), and British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation, which I am currently reading (among about 50 other books, from I. F. Stone to Thomas Middleton). Professor Hunt is senior lecturer in film and TV studies at Brunel University.
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