The art of Alfred Hitchcock

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Annette Insdorf

Long considered the definitive study of this director's genius, Francois Truffaut returns to print in a revised and updated edition. With fresh insights and an extensive section on the director's last five films - Love on the Run, The Green Room, The Last Metro, The Woman Next Door, and Confidentially YoursAnnette Insdorf captures the essence and totality of his work. She discusses his contributions to the French New Wave, his relations with his mentors Hitchcock and Renoir, and the dominant themes of his cinema - women, love, children, language - and she explores his life in relation to his films, from The Four Hundred Blows to The Man Who Loved Women. As warmly human as its subject, Francois Truffaut immortalizes one of the cinema's most popular, prolific, and profound artists.

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Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge

Examines the works of Monet from a new perspective, and traces the changes in his style as brought about by the changes and problems in his personal life.

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Marcia L. McAllister

Discusses how Steven Spielberg obtained his goal of becoming a movie director. Includes advice on setting and reaching goals.

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Sam Hamill

Du Fu (712–770) is one of the undisputed geniuses of Chinese poetry—still universally admired and read thirteen centuries after his death. Now David Young, author of Black Lab, and well known as a translator of Chinese poets, gives us a sparkling new translation of Du Fu’s verse, arranged to give us a tour of the life, each “chapter” of poems preceded by an introductory paragraph that situates us in place, time, and circumstance. What emerges is a portrait of a modest yet great artist, an ordinary man moving and adjusting as he must in troubled times, while creating a startling, timeless body of work. Du Fu wrote poems that engaged his contemporaries and widened the path of the lyric poet. As his society—one of the world’s great civilizations—slipped from a golden age into chaos, he wrote of the uncertain course of empire, the misfortunes and pleasures of his own family, the hard lives of ordinary people, the changing seasons, and the lives of creatures who shared his environment. As the poet chases chickens around the yard, observes tear streaks on his wife’s cheek, or receives a gift of some shallots from a neighbor, Young’s rendering brings Du Fu’s voice naturally and elegantly to life.