Books, Arts & Manners: Books to Watch Films By

A couple of years ago, the smart boys in publishing recognized two important marketing factors: 1) the emergence of a “film generation,” and 2) the millions of dollars in spending money available to the youth who presumably comprised this generation. Since then, books catering to every filmic taste have appeared at the approximate rate of old Monogram serials or new Andy Warhol movies.

Among the beneficiaries were the usual compilers of glossy “career” picture books, like The Films of Gustav von Seyfferitz, as well as the ghostwriters and grave-robbers responsible for the confessions of living actresses and the necrophagies of dead ones. But slightly ahead of that “film generation” has arisen a loose group of piquant, compassionate, mostly British film critics (not to be confused with the run of film journalists who pass as critics in the American press) whose studies, mostly of Hollywood directors, were gobbled up by the bookmen and quickly discharged onto paperback racks across the country.

A couple of years ago, the smart boys in publishing recognized two important marketing factors: 1) the emergence of a “film generation,” and 2) the millions of dollars in spending money available to the youth who presumably comprised this generation. Since then, books catering to every filmic taste have appeared at the approximate rate of old Monogram serials or new Andy Warhol movies.

Among the beneficiaries were the usual compilers of glossy “career” picture books, like The Films of Gustav von Seyfferitz, as well as the ghostwriters and grave-robbers responsible for the confessions of living actresses and the necrophagies of dead ones. But slightly ahead of that “film generation” has arisen a loose group of piquant, compassionate, mostly British film critics (not to be confused with the run of film journalists who pass as critics in the American press) whose studies, mostly of Hollywood directors, were gobbled up by the bookmen and quickly discharged onto paperback racks across the country.