Introduction
Chapter One
MOVEMENT AUTEURS
Chapter Two
FORERUNNERS
Chapter Three
RENOIR AND THE COOPERATIVE
Chapter Four
COMEDY
Chapter Five
GRAND MASTERS
Chapter Six
THE WESTERN
Chapter Seven
NOIR AND AFTER
Chapter Eight
SENTIMENTALITY AND AGGRESSION
Chapter Nine
VIOLENCE AND THE COZY
Chapter Ten
A FEMALE GAZE
Chapter Eleven
THE JAPANESE SMILE
Afterword
Index
Biography
Robert P. Kolker is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, United States. He is the author/editor of several books on film including The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies (2008), The Cultures of American Film (2014), The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and the Reimagining of Cinema (2016), Film, Form, and Culture, 5th edition, with Marsha Gordon (2024), Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film, with Nathan Abrams (2019) and Kubrick: An Odyssey, with Nathan Abrams (2025).
David Wyatt is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, United States. He is author of several books, including, Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California (1999), Secret Histories: Reading Twentieth-Century American Literature (2010), Hemingway, Style, and the Art of Emotion (2015), and Afterlife: The Strange Fate of Literary Remains (2025).
Kolker and Wyatt’s The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision offers an immensely readable and often surprising curation of international directors. With precision and wit, the authors take us on a tour of film history through genres, big ideas, production contexts, and feelings—theirs as well as those inspired by the films they so adroitly discuss. In any given chapter, their tremendous knowledge allows them to navigate an impressive range of topics that varies from one chapter to the next: from behind-the-scenes production stories and selective biography, to formal analysis and interview-style conversations, to insightful birds’ eye view assessments. These are seasoned and serious scholars of film who know their subjects deeply and write about it in a fashion that feels effortless. This book will reward any reader wanting to experience writing about film at its very best.
Marsha Gordon, Professor and Director of Film Studies, North Carolina State University, USA.
