The Films of Terrence Malick

by James Morrison (Editor), Thomas Schur (Editor)

Despite overwhelming acclaim for his work, director Terrence Malick remains an under-examined figure of an era of filmmaking that also produced such notables as Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. His films Badlands and Days of Heaven remain benchmarks of American cinema, while his recent The Thin Red Line returned him to the pantheon of American directors. In this new study, authors James Morrison and Thomas Schur examine each of his films in detail, drawing on extensive archival research to construct a portrait of his working methods as a director as well as the thematic, aesthetic, and cultural components of his work.

Moreover, aside from tracing the development of Malick's filmmaking from its beginnings to the present, the book compares his finished pictures to their original shooting scripts, and so provides a unique means of exploring the nature of his working methods and the ways in which they influence the final products. Revealing the ways in which these films connect to and depart from evolving traditions of the last 30 years, The Films of Terrence Malick provides a comprehensive and penetrating study as well as an informative and adventurous work of film criticism.

Genres: Film

184 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Professor Morrison is a scholar of modern literature and film and the author, editor, or co-author of eleven books. He holds a Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo and taught at North Carolina State University from 1990 to 2001. His recent works include Buffalo Trace and Auteur Theory and My Son John.