Directors and Directions: Cinema for the Seventies

by John Russell Taylor

A study of nine filmmakers and their films. The directors covered are Claude Chabrol, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey, Satyajit Ray, Miklos Jansco, and Dusan Makavejev.

327 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 1975

About the author

John Russell Taylor was an English critic, author, and historian whose work shaped modern writing on film, theatre, and visual art. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, he emerged in the early 1960s as one of Britain’s most influential cultural commentators. He wrote on cinema for Sight and Sound and Monthly Film Bulletin, and became film critic of The Times, later serving for decades as its art critic.
Taylor authored landmark studies of British drama and cinema, as well as acclaimed biographies of figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, and Alec Guinness. His book Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933–1950 remains a key work on European artists in American film. After developing a close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, he became the director’s authorised biographer.
From the early 1970s he also taught film at the University of Southern California, while contributing to major British and American publications. In addition to film and theatre, Taylor wrote extensively on modern and contemporary art, producing numerous monographs and broader studies. He also served on juries at major international film festivals and edited Films and Filming magazine for several years.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an early academic study of filmmakers in the 1970s who were considered auteurs. That is, the work considers the director to be similar to a book author in his fashioning of films and the themes and imagery throughout them. Dated now, because almost all the individuals under discussion went on to make additional movies, the book still has merit. For it pictures these filmmakers in their prime, in the context of the 1970s in which they were considered to be dominant. The chapters on Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, and Pier Paolo Pasolini are particularly helpful.