Top 25 books about film

Director Peter Bogdanovich’s (The Last Picture Show, Targets, Paper Moon) recent passing got me thinking about his series of conversations with Orson Welles, published in book form as This is Orson Welles in 1992, and how I used to devour books about film, back in the day, what I would call the heyday of film, from the 1970s to the 1990s. I’ve barely read a film book since.

1. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (1975 edition)
David Thomson

2. Time Out Film Guide

3. The Film Handbook
Geoff Andrew
Probably where my mistrust of Kubrick and Lean came from.

4. Scorsese on Scorsese
Ed. Ian Christie
This was my introduction to the Faber film director series and I read as many of them as I could: Altman on Altman, Lynch on Lynch, Herzog on Herzog, Gilliam on Gilliam – but not yet Ayoade on Ayoade, though it looks funny.

5. Hitchcock
Francois Truffaut

6. This is Orson Welles
Peter Bogdanovich

7. My Last Breath
Luis Bunuel

8. Letters
Francois Truffaut

9. Roman by Polanski
Roman Polanski

10. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Peter Biskind

11. Nightmare Movies
Kim Newman

12. Notes on Cinematography
Robert Bresson

13. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943-1973
P. Adams Sitney

14. Hollywood Babylon
Kenneth Anger

15. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema
Andrei Tarkovsky

16. Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate
Steven Bach

17. The Kid Stays in the Picture
Robert Evans

18. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema
Peter Wollen

19. Jean Vigo
P E Gomes

20. Love Is Colder Than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Robert Katz

21. The Best, Worst, and Most Unusual: Horror Films
Darrell Moore

22. The Cinema Book
Sam Cook

23. A History of the Cinema from Its Origins to 1970
Eric Rhode

24. Film Art: An Introduction
David Bordwell

25. Surrealism in the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening
Michael Gould

Previously on Barnflakes
The top 100 films
The top 100 books
Random film review: The Other Side of the Wind
Top 10 film directors
858 films in two years

Elsewhere on Barnflakes
Homeless Movies