Customer Reviews

A Short History of Film

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I was wonderfully surprised by A Short History Of Film - it is concise, and yet full of information : probably almost each important fact in the movie timeline is included. The book also not forgets the world outside Hollywood, as it also focuses on worldwide cinema.
As often with broad subjects; the question is which book, or books, to pick. Often reference books can be quite boring to read, since encyclopedic information does not lend itself to be interwoven in a story. This is not the case with A Short History Of Film. Written in sophisticated but clear language, every chapter it is always very interesting to read as a story in itself. The only other book I could compare it with, on a different scale, is the standard university reference Film Theory & Criticism. That book, Film Theory, might claim to go into more detail on diverse film subjects than any other book, but far too many articles (from experts in the history of film) are utterly academic (like Freudian theory that explains movies are mainly meant for male voyeurs etc. - catch my drift?) and far too often simply unreadable - and I am an academic myself! Although still THE reference, Film Theory seems to forget that learning, and acquiring knowledge and information, could, or should, also be just fun! So in my opinion, A Short History Of Film wins.I felt I had learnt a lot more about film in general than any other book I have read yet and I enjoyed it the most of all.

This book is used in schools that don't want their students to have to buy the more expensive, but far superior film history book by David A. Cook entitled "A History of Narrative Film."

Having taught a class using this text, I'm intimately aware of its contents. The only redeeming quality about this book is the timeline offered at the front, which chronicles important events in history alongside important milestones in cinema. Otherwise the book is 80%-90% a mere laundry list of directors and film titles. Many paragraphs are just sentences constructed by naming a director and then a list of films that person has directed, requiring students to memorize long lists of films (many of them irrelevant) instead of learning about social context, film analysis and trends.

The book is also terribly politically correct. Elia Kazan (yes, a controversial figure) is barely mentioned, while Leni Riefenstahl gets 3 full pages. Two of the 3 brief references to Kazan are just short mentions of "Pinky". A Streetcar Named Desire and the fact that he broke numerous film stars like Brando, Karl Malden, Marilyn Monroe etc. is/are not mentioned at all. Likewise female filmmakers who are largely forgotten by the public like Ida Lupino and Alice Guy get special treatment but other minority filmmakers do not get equal treatment. It seems the author(s) is trying to re-write film history based on their own agenda. The author also states that "On the Waterfront" is a thinly disguised anti-union film, which every film scholar I know disagrees with.

Also sorely absent is any film analysis. While the fabulous film book by Cook goes into detailed analysis of important films like Psycho and Citizen Kane, "A Short History of Film" can't seem to muster up the same type of inquiry.

Unless you have to buy this book for a class, you're better off buying "A History of Narrative Film" by Cook (the text that's used at USC, UCLA and other prominent schools) or just reading Wikipedia articles.

I bought this book as a supplement to my Film Appreciation Class in College. I found it informative, especially if you are a movie buff.