FILM BOOKS
This is a selection of film books that I’ve been collecting for a few years now. These are roughly separated into categories, but ones of personal interest, so I suggest using CTRL+F to search for specific titles/subjects/authors (I recommend searching for last names). I’m not from the US but this list is compiled from an American perspective mostly because a lot of the books available are from there. Most of these books are in pdf and can be read online, but some are in epub/mobi and can only be downloaded. Enjoy!
(Updated: February, 2024)
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BIOGRAPHY & INTERVIEW
* A Conversation With Jean Luc Godard (MacBean, James Roy)
* A Critical Cinema 2 - Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (MacDonald, Scott)
* A Girl's Got to Breathe - The Life of Teresa Wright (Spoto, Donald)
* A Great Big Girl Like Me - The Films of Marie Dressler (Sturtevant, Victoria)
* Agnès Varda - Interviews (Kline, T. Jefferson)
* Agnès Varda between Film, Photography, and Art (DeRoo, Rebecca)
* Alanis Obomsawin - The Vision of a Native Filmmaker (Lewis, Randolph)
* Alfred Hitchcock - Filming Our Fears (Adair, Gene)
* Alfred Hitchcock and the British Cinema (Tom Ryal)
* Alice Faye - A Life Beyond the Silver Screen (Elder, Jane Lenz)
* American Prince (Curtis, Tony)
* Andrei Tarkovsky - Elements of Cinema (Robert Bird)
* Andrei Tarkovsky (Martin, Sean)
* Audrey Hepburn - A Charmed Life (Karney, Robyn)
* Arthur Penn - American Director (Segaloff, Nat)
* Ava Gardner (Gardner, Ava; Evans, Peter)
* Ava Gardner - A Life in Movies (Bean, Kendra; Uzarowski, Anthony)
* Barbara - The Way She Is (Andersen, Christopher)
* Barbara Stanwyck - The Miracle Woman (Callahan, Dan)
* Bette & Joan - The Divine Feud (Considine, Shaun)
* Blue Angel - The Life of Marlene Dietrich (Spoto, Donald)
* Box Set - Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor
* Buster Keaton Remembered (Keaton, Eleanor; Vance, Jeffrey)
* Brian De Palma's Split-Screen - A Life in Film (Keesey, Douglas)
* Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet - My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker (Wahl, Jan)
* Carole Landis - A Most Beautiful Girl (Gans, Eric)
* Cary Grant - A Biography (Eliot, Marc)
* Charles Walters - The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance (Phillips, Brent)
* Clara Bow Runnin' Wild (Stenn, David)
* Claudette Colbert - She Walked in Beauty (Dick, Bernard F.)
* Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily Coping (Carroll, Noel)
* Colleen Moore - A Biography of the Silent Film Star (Codori, Jeff)
* Coop - the life and legend of Gary Cooper (Kaminsky, Stuart M.)
* Crane - Sex, Celebrity, and My Father's Unsolved Murder (Crane, Robert; Fryer, Christopher)
* Cybill disobedience - how I survived beauty pageants, Elvis, sex, Bruce Willis, lies, marriage, motherhood, hollywood, and the irrepressible urge to say what I think (Shepherd, Cybill; Ball, Aimee Lee)
* Dark victory - the life of Bette Davis (Sikov, Ed)
* D. W. Griffith - Interviews (Slide, Anthony)
* Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century (Tibbetts, John C.; Welsh, James M.; Brownlow, Kevin; Fairbanks, Vera)
* Elizabeth Taylor - The Life of a Hollywood Legend (Sprinkel, Katy)
* Emeric Pressburger - The Life and Death of a Screenwriter (Macdonald, Kevin)
* Enchantment - the life of Audrey Hepburn (Spoto, Donald)
* Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise (Eyman, Scott)
* Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script (Duchovnay, Gerald)
* Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell (Dick, Bernard F.)
* Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (McBride, Joseph)
* Gene Tierney: A Biography (Vogel, Michelle; Cassini, Christina)
* Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations (Williams, Tami)
* George A. Romero: Interviews (Williams, Tony)
* Giant: George Stevens, a Life on Film (Moss, Marilyn Ann)
* Ginger Rogers: A Bio-Bibliography (Faris, Jocelyn)
* Glenn Ford: A Life (Ford, Peter; McGilligan, Patrick)
* Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up (Welsch, Tricia)
* Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (Rhodes, Richard)
* Herzog on Herzog (Cronin, Paul)
* High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly (Spoto, Donald)
* Hitchcock - the Definitive Study (Truffaut, Francois)
* Hollywood Beauty - Linda Darnell and the American Dream (Davis, Ronald L.)
* Hollywood Rajah - The life and times of Louis B. Mayer (Crowther, Bosley)
* Hollywood Enigma - Dana Andrews (Rollyson, Carl Edmund)
* Hollywood Madonna - Loretta Young (Dick, Bernard F.)
* Ingmar Bergman - The Life and Films of the Last Great European Director (Macnab, Geoffrey)
* I Talked with a Zombie: Interviews With 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-Fi Films and Television (Weaver, Tom)
* Ishiro Honda - A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa (Ryfle, Steve; Godziszewski, Ed)
* It's Only a Movie - Alfred Hitchcock - A Personal Biography (Chandler, Charlotte)
* If I'm so famous how come nobody's ever heard of me (Shepard, Jewel)
* Jennifer Jones - The Life and Films (Green, Paul)
* Jimmy Stewart - A Biography (Eliot, Marc)
* Joan Blondell - A Life between Takes (Kennedy, Matthew)
* Joan Crawford - The Essential Biography (Quirk, Lawrence J.; Schoell, William)
* John Gilbert - The Last of the Silent Film Stars (Golden, Eve)
* Judy Garland - A Biography (Edwards, Anne)
* Katharine Hepburn - A Remarkable Woman (Edwards, Anne)
* Krzysztof Kieslowski - Interviews (Bernard, Renata; Woodward, Steven)
* Lauren Bacall - By Myself and Then Some (Bacall, Lauren)
* Leslie Howard - The Lost Actor (Eforgan, Estel)
* Life Beyond Measure - Letters to My Great-Granddaughter (Poitier, Sidney)
* Little Girl Lost (Barrymore, Drew)
* Love, Lucy (Ball, Lucille)
* Lupe Veïlez - the life and career of Hollywood's mexican spitfire (Vogel, Michelle)
* Mae Murray - The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips (Ankerich, Michael G.; Brownlow, Kevin)
* Mae West - An Icon in Black and White (Watts, Jill)
* Madeline Kahn - Being the Music, A Life (Madison, William V.)
* Marilyn Monroe - Fragments, Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters (Monroe, Marilyn)
* Marilyn Monroe - My Story (Monroe, Marilyn; Hecht, Ben)
* Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark (Lucas, Tim)
* Mary Pickford - Queen of the Movies (Schmidt, Christel)
* Marlene Dietrich - Life and Legend (Bach, Steven)
* Maureen O'Hara - The Biography (Malone, Aubrey)
* More Than a Woman - An Intimate Biography of Bette Davis (Spada, James)
* Movie Stars of the 1930s - Glamour in a Golden Age (McLean, Adrienne L.)
* Movie Stars of the 1940s - What Dreams Were Made Of (Griffin, Sean)
* Mrs. Ziegfeld - The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke (Hayter-Menzies, Grant)
* My Last Breath (Buñuel, Luis)
* My Life So Far (Fonda, Jane)
* My Life with Cleopatra - The Making of a Hollywood Classic (Hyams, Joe; Wanger, Walter)
* My Lunches with Orson - Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles (Biskind, Peter)
* My Way of Life (Crawford, Joan)
* My Wonderful World Of Slapstick (Buster Keaton, Charles Samuels)
* Myrna Loy - The Only Good Girl in Hollywood (Leider, Emily Wortis)
* Natasha - The Biography of Natalie Wood (Finstad, Suzanne)
* Norma - the story of Norma Shearer (Quirk, Lawrence J)
* Notorious - the life of Ingrid Bergman (Bergman, Ingrid; Cartwright, Jon; Spoto, Donald)
* Orson Welles - A Biography (Leaming, Barbara)
* Phantom Lady - Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock (Lane, Christina)
* Pierre Batcheff and Stardom in 1920s French Cinema (Powrie, Phil; Rebillard, Eric)
* Possessed - The Life of Joan Crawford (Morrow, William)
* Raoul Walsh - The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director (Moss, Marilyn Ann)
* Rebel without a crew, or, How a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player (Rodriguez, Robert)
* Roger Corman - Interviews (Nasr, Constantine)
* Room 1219 - The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (Merritt, Greg)
* Saul Bass - Anatomy of Film Design (Horak, Jan-Christopher)
* Sidney J. Furie - Life and Films (Kremer, Daniel)
* Sculpting In Time (Tarkovsky, Andrei)
* Seduction - Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood (Longworth, Karina)
* Self-Portrait (Tierney, Gene)
* Silent Lives - 100 Biographies of the Silent Film Era (Davis, Lon)
* Sitting Pretty - The Life and Times of Clifton Webb (Webb, Clifton; Smith, David L.; Wagner, Robert)
* Some Like It Wilder - The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder (Phillips, Gene D.)
* Something Like an Autobiography (Kurosawa, Akira)
* Spencer Tracy - A Biography (Curtis, James)
* Tab Hunter Confidential - The Making of a Movie Star (Hunter, Tab; Muller, Eddie)
* The Bennetts - An Acting Family (Kellow, Brian)
* The Cinema of Takashi Miike (Mes, Tom)
* The Encyclopedia of Orson Welles (Berg, Chuck; Erskine, Tom)
* The Fall of Buster Keaton - His Films for MGM, Educational Pictures, and Columbia (Neibaur, James L.)
* The Films In My Life (Truffaut, François)
* The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Kalin, Jesse)
* The Films of Roberto Rossellini (Bondanella, Peter)
* The First King of Hollywood - The Life of Douglas Fairbanks (Goessel, Tracey)
* The First Lady of Hollywood - A Biography of Louella Parsons (Barbas, Samantha)
* The Ice Cream Blonde - The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd (Morgan, Michelle)
* The Impossible David Lynch (McGowan, Todd)
* The Lady from the Black Lagoon - Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick (O’Meara, Mallory)
* The Magic Lantern - An Autobiography (Bergman, Ingmar)
* The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me (Gish, Lillian)
* The Shocking Miss Pilgrim - A Writer in Early Hollywood (Maas, Frederica Sagor)
* The Warrior's Camera - The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Prince, Stephen)
* Thomas Ince - Hollywood's Independent Pioneer (Taves, Brian)
* Tough as Nails - The Life and Films of Richard Brooks (