Ernst Malmsten

Charles Drazin

Erik Portanger

boo hoo is a gripping, insider's account of the rise and fall of this most controversial of internet startups - a global, online retailer of sports and designer clothes.

$135 Million, 18 Months : a Dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe

Boo Hoo

The producer behind such celebrated films as The Four Feathers and The Third Man is one of the most colourful and important figures in the history of the British cinema. This gripping biography tells how with extraordinary ambition, enterprise and showmanship, Alexander Korda established in Britain a film industry that rivalled Hollywood, built Europe's biggest studio, and created world-class stars, including Charles Laughton and Vivien Leigh. The biography traces Korda's path from his rural childhood in a remote part of Hungary to a British knighthood. Korda's legacy, it argues, was a film industry that dared to dream on the largest possible scale. But he also exemplified the pattern of boom and bust that dogged the British cinema ever since he first came into the limelight in 1933 with the international success of The Private Life of Henry VIII. To understand his often turbulent career is to gain a profound insight into the nature of the British cinema both then and now.

Britain's Movie Mogul

Korda

In The Finest Years, Charles Drazin considers a crucial period in British cinema and offers insights into the film makers' characters, circumstances and aspirations.

British Cinema of the 1940s

The Finest Years

French cinema

Amidst the chaos and anarchy of civil war-wracked France, one man's spectacular rise and devastating fall was lost to history - until now.

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King

Tells the story of Nicolas Fouquet's adventures as a tax-collector, caught up in rebellion in the Dauphine, of the loyalty and service that he gave to Cardinal Mazarin and of the financial wizardry that somehow kept France's finances together.

The Rise and Fall of Nicolas Foucquet

The Man who Outshone the Sun King

Offering portraits of such key figures as the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont, he looks at the early pioneers who transformed a fairground novelty into a global industry. The crisis caused by the First World War led France to surrender her position as the world's dominant film-making power, but French cinema forged a new role for itself as a beacon of cinematic possibility and achievement. Producing such distinctive film-makers as Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol, Sachy Guitry and Julien Duvivier, the French cinema's Golden Age boasted an intelligence, maturity and flair that classical Hollywood could admire but struggle to emulate. Suggesting a Gallic attitude that has always considered the cinema to be as much a cause as a business, Drazin looks at the extraordinary resilience of the French film industry during the Second World War when, in spite of the national catastrophe of defeat and occupation, it was still able to produce such classics as Le Corbeau and Les Enfants du Paradis. Finally, he traces its remarkable post-war regeneration. He looks at the seminal impact of the New Wave of film-makers - typified by Truffaut and Godard - but also at the other waves that have followed since. As he brings the story up-to-date - with Jacques Audaird's award-winning A Prophet - he seeks to capture the essence of the French film tradition and why it continues to matter to anyone who cares about the cinema.

The Faber Book of French Cinema

(Limelight). Half a century after its opening, The Third Man remains an unquestioned masterpiece of film artistry and, for many, the greatest British movie ever made. Whether it is Harry Lime's magical first appearance or the celebrated cuckoo clock speech or the climactic chase through the sewers beneath Vienna or the haunting theme music of Anton Karas, the film contains some of the most memorable moments in screen history. Drawing on both contemporary documents and accounts of the people involved, In Search of The Third Man explores the many myths that over the years have grown around this extraordinary film, and seeks to unravel the facts from the fiction. "...you'll want to read The Third Man...The story of the film's creation is as intriguing as the film itself" Leonard Maltin, Playboy

In Search of the Third Man

Half a century after its opening, The Third Man remains an unquestioned masterpiece of film artistry and, for many, the greatest British movie ever made. Whether it is Harry Lime's magical first appearance or the celebrated cuckoo clock speech or the climactic chase through the sewers beneath Vienna or the haunting theme music of Anton Karas, the film contains some of the most memorable moments in screen history. Drawing on both contemporary documents and accounts of the people involved, In Search of The Third Man explores the many myths that over the years have grown around this extraordinary film, and seeks to unravel the facts from the fiction. .,."you'll want to read The Third Man...The story of the film's creation is as intriguing as the film itself" -Leonard Maltin, Playboy

Charles Drazin

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