For this month, I read The Anatomy of Film, a book given to me by a teacher last year. It isn’t the type of book I’d normally read. Mainly because it’s an instructional book in the sense that it tells the reader the different aspects of film and how they come together to create one. (Usually, I’d read and review a book in the fiction genre.) But I found this book to be very informative,especially with it’s detailed analysis of how the composition of shots affect different genres and subgenres of film . It even dives into the subject of writers becoming directors, or having gone hyphenate, with an interview between the author and Alan Alda (one of my favorite people in the world), who is described as going double hyphenate because he is a writer, director and actor.
However, the reason I didn’t give it a pure, five star rating was because I felt it spent too long with the introduction and the language was too critical, assaulting even. For example, in the introduction I clearly remember the author stating, “A film without sound is an abomination.” Yes, a soundless film is far from even being a halfway decent film, but to call it an abomination? (Notice the difference between soundless and silent film. A soundless film is a film without any sound track whatsoever. Silent films are films accompanied by music to help tell the tone of the film.)
Otherwise, it was a very good book, well written and very informative.