SightandSound

This question would generally be for anyone who has the same appreciation I do for the entire first century of cinema. I need to know what are the quintessential biographies/autobio's of these great directors. There are so many to pick from, but I want to get the best of them all.

The directors I'm looking for bio's on are:

Akira Kurosawa
Alfred Hitchcock
David Lean
Federico Fellini
Francis Ford Coppola
John Ford
Luis Bunuel
Martin Scorsese
Steven Spielberg

What are the SINGLE best books on these directors. If there is more than one or two great bio's of them, let me know.

I'd like to have a book to reference for each of them.

Thanks!
sightandsound

devilpants

"Hitchcock:The Dark Side of Genius" by Donald Spoto is pretty good if you want to read a bunch of dirt (aka abusive behavior to cast and crew) on the great man. It also delves into his past and his personal psychology.

I would stay away from any autobiographies by Fellini or Bunuel as they only discuss their childhoods and rarely go into their films in great detail. Pretty disappointing. I didn't like Polanski's autobiography, either.

Whatever you might think of his films, the Roger Corman autobiography is very good as far as the craft of filmmaking on a thrifty scale is quite educational.

The Welles biography by Barbara Leaming is very good and is very objective about his excesses both personal and artistic.

I haven't read John Huston's books (he wrote two autobiogs) but they've got to be great.

If you want to read about Coppola, Scorcese or Spielberg check out that "Easy Riders" book (I forget the long title). It's about the way cinema radically changed in the early seventies due to the newer wave of filmmakers in America.

Cornfed

Darren H

About a year ago I started a film book reading challenge thread over at the Home Theater Forum. You might want to dig through it for suggestions.

The challenge has since been taken up by someone else at CriterionDVD.

My first suggestion, though, is that you start with Hitchcock/Truffaut, a must-read for all film lovers. It's a transcription of hours and hours of conversations between the two directors. They begin with Hitch's first films, then work their way through most of his career. Great stuff.

tor_greg

Yeah, Truffeaux's book on Hitchcock is hands-down famous.

BearFan

Another vote for Hitchcock/Truffaut, it is fantastic.

bkornman

Ive done some searching on amazon.com, etc looking for books about Kurosawa, and i thought this may be the ideal place to ask if anyone has read anything which stood out to them.

There are a number available on the site, and im looking for more about him, and his style of filmmaking then about his scripts or a particular film.

If anyone has any ideas, or reccommendations i would appreciate them.

Thanks,

BRK

Bean-si

I haven't read it myself but all the film magazines I read rated 'The Emperor and the Wolf' by S. Galbraith. Here's an Amazon UK link....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...101966-6180449

Cheers.

milkdog

I have "The Films of Akira Kurosawa" by Allan Richie (the leading Japanese film expert). It goes into a lot of detail on the style and techniques used to make each movie. It really breaks every aspect of each film down. Excellent for aspiring filmmakers!

His autobiography is okay, but it really doesn't cover his filmmaking much. The best part of it are the general reflections on filmmaking and other things in the back.