Understanding Movies [Paperback]

Louis Giannetti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995 | ISBN-10: 0131908367 | ISBN-13: 978-0131908369 | Edition: 7th

"Understanding Movies" is designed to help students analyze movies with precision and technical sophistication. Its focus is on formalism - how the forms of the film such as camera work, editing and photography create meaning in a film. The 7th Edition updates each chapter with recent films and personalities familiar to today's students.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Understanding Movies is designed to help students analyze movies with precision and technical sophistication. Its focus is on formalism--how the forms of the film (e.g., camera work, editing, photography, etc.) create meaning in a film. The Seventh Edition updates each chapter with recent films and personalities familiar to today's students.

From the Back Cover

Key Benefit: Designed to help readers analyze movies with precision and technical sophistication. Key Topics: Its focus is on formalism—how the forms of the film (e.g., camera work, editing, photography, etc.) create meaning in a film. Updates each chapter with recent films and personalities familiar to today's readers. Contains a wide assortment of ethnically diverse examples, including African-American and Asian-American movies, films with a feminist or gay orientation, movies from developing countries, and European and Hollywood classics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 527 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div; 7th edition (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131908367
• ISBN-13: 978-0131908369
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,806,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guidebook To Understanding Movies, May 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Understanding Movies (Paperback)

This excellent and easy-to-understand book describes how to analyze and interpret movies in much the same way that we have been taught to analyze and critique literature. Spanning the whole of the 20th century and every conceivable genre, it is a must for anyone seriously interested in understanding movies thoroughly. Includes both theoretical and practical aspects of filmmaking.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, July 23, 1999

By 

Jonathan Leybovich (San Mateo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Understanding Movies (Paperback)

"Understanding Movies" is one of those rare works that so thoroughly conquers its domain it makes any other book on the same subject matter seem utterly pointless. This is remarkable enough in itself. What makes this book even more extraordinary is the broadness of the domain it manages to conquer. Read this book and you WIIL understand the film-making process. As such it is useful to both directors, actors, screenwriters, critics and even the casual film consumer.

The book is organized analytically, starting with the most basic elements of film (photography, composition) and working its way up to the most complex (theory, criticism). Actual films are used to illustrate the points, and the book is wonderfully free of the theoretical jargon that deadens so much of contemporary criticism.

Giannetti deserves high praise for putting together this wonderful book and I'm only glad I manged to stumble across it at the tail-end of my college career (in a non-film class, ironically enough).