Films unite us and touch us and tell us who we are. Films reflect our values and shape our lives. Classic films are timeless and speak to all ages with universal themes such as: love, hate, joy, grief, sorrow, anger, jealousy and the need for family, friends, power and leadership.

Films depict the tone of our nation historically, they give an overview of the emotions of the times.

Here are some books that focus on the film industry and their impact on our nation.

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy
Edited by Nick Browne
Published by Cambridge University Press (2000)
Pages 191 Price $24.99 paperback

Francis Ford Coppola is a dynamic director and sensitive writer, whose works depict the problems of four decades of American culture.He was born in 1939 and is credited for starting the New Hollywood movement which included in the 1960’s and 70’s  a different attitude toward crime. An anti-hero became attractive in his films as seen in the Godfather films. We know Michael Corleone is the head of a crime organization, but is attractive through loyalty to his family and being a good leader but immoral!

What makes a Coppola film? His works explore family relations, loneliness, search for identity, power, violence, and peer group influences. His works catch moments of togetherness, moments of victory,and moments of loss. His best movies  include the highs and lows of our lives.

For example in the first Godfather film I, created in 1972, Coppola captures family loyalty above all even above the law. It is basically the story of the struggle of the Corleone family of New York to maintain and transform their illegal business (in the face of violent competitors ) to a legitimate business inside the law.

Nick Browne, Professor of Film Studies at he University of California, Los Angeles, states in this book.”The films that make up the Godfather Trilogy are among the most acclaimed works of the American Cinema.Together they provide a perspective on almost a century of American life and cultures refracted through the conventions of the crime genre.”

For those of you who love films, this book explores Francis Ford Coppola’s talents in directing and writing films that show the struggles that reflect the quality of life found in America both good and bad. He writes in his films from a male point of view. His heroes are masculine, powerful, lonely,and decision makers. That is why I like them. They have the ability to stand alone.

His films like this book make you want to read it again and see the film again. Both the book and Coppola’s films are complex, interesting, and require time and thought.

***

The Female Gaze
Essential Movies Made by Women
Edited by Alicia Malone
Published by Mango Publishing Group (2018)
Pages 285 Price 19.99

Alicia Malone is a film reporter, author and host on Turner Classic Movies. She was born in Australia and widely known before she moved to the United states in 2011. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR as a film expert.

Malone is passionate about classic films as well as supporting women directors of films. Her first book dealing with the history of women working in films is titled “Backwards & in Heels.” It discusses Hedy Lamarr, Olivia de Haviland, Dorothy Dandridge, Meryle Streep, Geena Davis, Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher, to name only a few, and there struggles for equal rights.

In Malone’s current book, “The Female Gaze,” she invites conversation on women directors’ points of view.Malone opens her book with a quote from a famous art critic’s book,“Ways of Seeing,” by John Berger. Berger states,” To simplify this….Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male:the surveyed female.Thus she turns herself into an object and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

From this point of view Malone has asked different authors to write about a woman’s gaze as directors in films. It is a subject  not explored by the general public recently but worthy of consideration in 2018. We have women in politics, the law, medicine, corporations, and why not in the directing of films?

This book discusses women directors in such films as: “The Hitch-Hiker” directed by Ida Lupino, “The Piano” directed by Jane Campion,”The Whale Rider” directed by Niki Caro, ”Real women Have Curves,” directed by Patricia Cardoso and “Lady Bird” directed by Greta Gerwig to name only a few.

Jenna Ipcar, a New york film critic and granddaughter of Dahlov Ipcar, artist of Maine, discusses in an essay in this book, the importance of Elaine May as a woman director of the 1972  film, “Heartbreak Kid.” Ipcar states,”The Heartbreak Kid” is all at once a poignant, hilarious, and vicious retelling of the male romantic fantasy, the likes of which I feel only a woman could have been so acutely aware of in the 1970’s.

In the current climate of the “Me Too” movement, its a gift to see any film that shines light on the damage done by men who treat women like objects. A true triumph of female film making.”

This book brings to the public a valid subject to explore and become informed about. Women directors are a hidden treasure in the film industry.The next film you see, select one directed by a woman and see if you like it. After reading this book, I will be looking for one!

Pat Davidson Reef is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. She received her Masters Degree at the University of Southern Maine.She taught English and Art History at Catherine McAuley High for many years.She now teaches at the University of Southern Maine in Portland in the  Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Classic Films. She recently wrote a children’s book,”Dahlov Ipcar Artist, and is now writing another children’s book “Bernard Langlais Revisited.”

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