Scene by Scene: Film Actors and Directors Discuss Their Work

by Mark Cousins

This book looks at over 40 of the most important film scenes from the last 50 years. Each of the scenes is fully illustrated and discussed with either the director of the film or one of the main actors. In the process it is revealed how the scene was made, what the influences on it were and how it relates to the film as a whole. Those interviewed include such famous names as Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery, Martin Scorsese, Rod Steiger, Dennis Hopper, Tom Hanks, Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jack Lemmon, Steve Martin and many others. The scenes included come from a range of seminal films, such as Some Like It Hot, Rebel without a Cause, Psycho, Easy Rider, Last Tango in Paris, Taxi Driver, Blue Velvet and Saving Private Ryan amongst others.
Presented in a lively and accessible manner by Mark Cousins and fully illustrated throughout, the book will appeal to the general reader and all those wishing to learn about the craft of film-making.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Mark Cousins is an author, film critic, producer, and documentary filmmaker. He is the former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and a regular contributor to Prospect, Sight and Sound, and The Times. His latest film is a 14-hour documentary about female filmmakers, Women Make Film.

Reviews

[Jane Scholey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m such a huge cinema fan. This is one of my go to books when I want to revisit some classic scenes.

[Raf Linmans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marc Cousins bekijkt met filmmakers en acteurs zelfgekozen sleutelscenes uit hun belangrijkste films. Bondig kom je zo het een en het ander te weten over het exacte opnameproces, de werkwijze van deze of gene regisseur, of de onderlinge relaties tussen de hoofdrolspelers. Interessante lectuur, maar de interviews mochten toch iets langer zijn imho (nu 2-3 bladzijden met gigantische interlinie).

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knocked this one out in a day because it's a solid interview book. It's based off his BBC talk show where he has a guest on and they have a conversation about a certain movie like with David Lynch, he'll talk to Lynch about Blue Velvet while a scene from Blue Velvet is on. And every now and then the guest will chime in on the clip being shown. It's a nice time capsule of what these artists think now sometimes 40 years afterwards and for some of the filmmakers they talk about what they were thinking about, going through at the time.

They get into specifics of certain films and endings of certain films so clearly if you don't want certain movies spoiled for you, skip those sections but you can pick and choose what you want to read and then get back to the book after you've watched Psycho or Dressed to Kill. The anecdotes in the book are mostly pretty good. I wish the book was longer but such is life.

Brian De Palma had stories, Lauren Bacall (!), Martin Scorsese, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, David Lynch, Donald Sutherland, Kirk Douglas, and on and on. Sometimes Mark Cousins asks oddball questions and makes off-the-wall comments, the Jane Russell conversation on Gentleman Prefer Blondes ends with Russell rolling her eyes. It says that in the print and I won't spoil why.

Read it.

[Richard Findlay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is unique - the chance to eavesdrop on over 40 conversations between film critic/festival director and filmmaker Mark Cousins and the 'all time greats' of the film industry as they discuss their favourite scenes. I acquired and dipped into this gem in 2002 and look forward to making its acquaintance in more depth over the next few weeks.