‘An Auteurist History of Film’ by Charles Silver (1940-2016) is a little gem of a book conceived by its author as a series of short introductory notes accompanying film screenings from the New York’s Museum of Modern Art film collection that took place between 2009 and 2014. Covering true masterpieces of film making as diverse as ‘Tabu’ (1931) by Murnau , ‘L’Atalante’ (1934) by Jean Vigo, ‘The Rules of the Game’ (1939) by Jean Renoir, ‘Casablanca’ (1942) by Michael Curtiz, ‘Ivan the Terrible’ by Sergei Eisenstein, ‘Rome Open City’ (1945) by Roberto Rosselini, ‘Utamaro and His Five Women’ (1946) by Kenji Mizoguchi, ‘Notorious’ (1946)’ by Alfred Hitchcock, ‘The Bicycle Thiefs’ (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, ‘Orpheus’ (1949) by Jean Cocteau, it provides a unique encyclopaedia of fine art cinema. Reading the articles collected in this book could be an equally pleasant experience before and after watching the film for they bring to the fore unknown details, peculiarities of the director’s style, the context of the country and the era as well as information about other films by the same director. Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Jean Renoir, Kenji Mizoguchi, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Roberto Rosselini, Jacques Tati, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Louis Malle, Adrzej Wajda, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Luchino Visconti, Roman Polanski, Eric Rohmer, Woody Allen, in other words, the whole history of fine art cinema from late 1920s to 1980s is unfolding in front of our very eyes while we explore this book, published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A rare example of cinema writing, the book never fails to impress. The films selected for the book also share something about the personality of the author, his fine taste and his deep understanding of the cinema as an art form. The book is available on Amazon and would make an incredible Christmas present: Chales Silver (2016) An Auteurist History of Film
References:
Charles Silver (2016) An Auteurist History of Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Eco Art Gallery 