Richard Gilman referred to How to Read a Film as simply "the best single work of its kind." And Janet Maslin in The New York Times Book Review marveled at James Monaco's ability to collect "an enormous amount of useful information and assemble it in an exhilaratingly simple and systematic way." Indeed, since its original publication in 1977, this hugely popular book has become the definitive source on film and media. Now, James Monaco offers a special anniversary edition of his classic work, featuring a new preface and several new sections, including an "Essential Library: One Hundred Books About Film and Media You Should Read" and "One Hundred Films You Should See." As in previous editions, Monaco once again looks at film from many vantage points, as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to other narrative media such as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, the book discusses the elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning, and, more importantly, how we can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate. In addition, Monaco stresses the still-evolving digital context of film throughout--one of the new sections looks at the untrustworthy nature of digital images and sound--and his chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century with a thorough discussion of topics like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film. With hundreds of illustrative black-and-white film stills and diagrams, How to Read a Film is an indispensable addition to the library of everyone who loves the cinema and wants to understand it better.
"Anyone who writes about film, or who is interested in film seriously, just has to have it."--Richard Roud, Director of the New York Film Festival
About the Author
James Monaco is a writer, publisher, and producer. His books include American Film Now, The New Wave, The Encyclopedia of Film, and The Connoisseur's Guide to the Movies. He lives and works in the New York City area.
Product Details
Paperback: 736 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 4th edition (May 8, 2009)
James Monaco is an author and publisher with expertise in electronic publishing, film, and the media industries. He is currently head of Harbor Electronic Publishing, which he founded in 1994, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Copyright Clearance Center.
Monaco is the author of a number of books on the film industry and the media, including The Dictionary of New Media (HEP 2000), The Connoisseur's Guide to the Movies (Facts on File 1985); American Film Now (Oxford University Press 1979, 1984); and the best-selling How to Read a Film (Oxford University Press 1977, 1981, 2000, 2009). Translations of various titles have appeared in German, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Czech, Greek, Polish, Indonesian, and Farsi. He has also edited a number of basic references, including Who's Who in American Film Now (New York Zoetrope 1981, 1987),The Movie Guide (Putnam, Virgin 1992, 1993); and The Encyclopedia of Film (Putnam, Virgin 1991).
Monaco's journalism and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, American Film, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. In the 1970s, he was a contributing editor of [More] and Cineaste and associate editor of Take One. As a media commentator for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" in the early 1980s, Monaco's analysis reached more than 250 affiliate stations. His television credits include appearances on all the major American networks, ABC (Sydney), BBC (London), NHK (Tokyo), CBC (Montreal), WDR (Frankfurt) and more than a hundred local stations around the country.
How To Read a Film: multimedia edition, a DVD-ROM, appeared in 2000 in conjunction with the third edition of the book--completely revised and expanded. The disc won the DVD-ROM Excellence Award of the DVD Association in 2001 and has been adopted by scores of university film courses.
Monaco is also active as a book publisher via Harbor Electronic Publishing. Recent HEP titles include Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film, Jack Newfield's The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America, and Doug Pratt's DVD. HEP also produces a list of titles devoted to the East End of Long Island, including nature guides and local history.
In the early 1980s he founded Baseline and its subsidiary, New York Zoetrope. With Baseline, Leonard Maltin, Pauline Kael, and others, Monaco contributed information for Microsoft's best-selling multimedia CD Cinemania. A landmark in multimedia productions, Cinemania sold more than 2.8 million copies in the mid-1990s.
Baseline, which Monaco founded in 1982, provides advanced information services for the entertainment industry worldwide. Its subsidiary, New York Zoetrope, was a specialty book-publishing company founded in 1975 which concentrated on titles in film and entertainment. Zoetrope's publications included more than 40 reference and specialized titles including The Laser Video Disc Companion, The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows, and Who's Who in American Film Now. In 1999 Baseline was acquired by Hollywood.com. In 2006 it became a unit of the New York Times Company.
Monaco has spoken often to industry forums in the U.S. and Europe. Engagements have included Yale's Watson School of Management, the Information Industry Association's Senior Management Symposium, the International Conference and Exposition on Multimedia and CD-ROM, Digital Video/Multimedia Expo, and Digital Hollywood.
A former member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York, Monaco also taught at Columbia University, The City University of New York, New York University, and elsewhere. He has lectured to a wide variety of professional, academic, and general audiences. Monaco has degrees from Muhlenberg College and Columbia University.
Monaco is a long-time member of the Author's Guild and was a founder of the American Book Producers Association. He is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, London. He has served on the Boards of Directors of Carron Trading Corp. and Galloway Internet Ltd. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee for the Program for Art on Film, Inc. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Interactive Services Association and was Chairman of the Videotext Marketing Consortium.
Born and raised in New York City, Monaco currently lives and works in Manhattan and Sag Harbor with his wife, Susan Schenker, an educator. They are the parents of three adult children.
While not as concentrated, pragmatic, or reader-friendly as the title might suggest, Monaco's book is still the best comprehensive one-volume introduction to the aesthetics, politics, economics, theory, phenomenology, and industry of film. It's best seen as complementary to more basic introductory texts and detailed histories. Readers with a theoretical bent are most likely to appreciate its unique strengths.
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This book is the most lucid textbook on film theory. While there are many other written textbooks on film theory, I have found the few other textbooks that I encountered either full of trivia or too watered down or almost like commentaries rather than text books.
This book examines cinema from the technical, evolutionary and cultural perspectives and also gives the most lucid exposition of the work of various film theorists like Metz, Mitry, Eisentein, Kracauer, Wollen and others.
Particularly relevant are the explanations of differences between montage and mise en scene approaches, types of montage and grand syntagmas of cinema (cinematic grammars).
It also sounds and reads like a deft synthesis of all that can be said about cinema rather than as a loosely strung collection of information that students might seek.
It also contains one of the most comprehensive and relevant bibliographies on film theory.
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Monaco's "How To Read A Film" is an excellent introduction to film theory and it's concepts.
While we have all aquired a certain level of "cinematic language" (you can't help it, it's part of watching movies), Monaco provides a Dictonary and Thesaurus for those of us who want a deeper understanding of the film "experience" and the language to descibe it with.
Don't be daunted by the above paragraph, either -- Monoco is a good enough writer that it's much easier to read the book than to read *about* the book. Also an excellent companion piece to Cook's "History Of Narrative Film".
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