European Cinema

By Elizabeth Ezra

Book Overview

European Cinema is the first book to provide overviews of key movements in European film history, from the inception of the medium in 1895 to the present. The book includes accessible introductions to traditions as diverse as early Soviet cinema, German Expressionism, Surrealism, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, Ealing Comedy, East-Central European cinema, Contemporary Spanish cinema, and much more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199255717
• ISBN13: 9780199255719
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

impressive sweep, but can't cover subjects in depth

The book really only exists as a lead into its subject. The vast differences in the national trends all over Europe since films first arose causes this. Nonetheless, you might get a good top level appreciation of, say, Soviet film making, from 1920 to the end of the Soviet Union. Or of the films of Weimar Germany. Space considerations restrict those 2 examples to one chapter each. Fans obviously will want more detailed texts. But the sweep of the book is impressive. The one big omission is a study of films made in Nazi Germany. There are chapters on German film making before (as mentioned above) and after those years. Probably because Nazi films are a uniquely pathological case, even more so than Soviet films, and might have made an awkward fit with the rest of the book.