Cinema Today

A third of the entire history of cinema is represented by films produced from 1970 onwards.

This survey explores this history, what may be referred to as the Third Age of world cinema, and the films, people and technologies which have shaped its development.

The work of film-makers who have made a significant contribution to the film industry during this period is also highlighted and discussed.

The text begins by examining the moment at which the modern blockbuster was born.

In the early 1970s a string of spectacularly successful films such as "MASH" (1970), "The Godfather" (1972) and "Jaws" (1975) transformed the economic climate of Hollywood and the power relationship within it.

The first half of the book looks at New Hollywood and explores its recent and continued development through film genres including crime, science fiction, horror and comedy.

The book identifies how social and economic change influenced the development of films, assesses the impact of emerging new waves of cinema on Hollywood and Hollywood's reaction to these changes. Influential directors such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, George Lucas, Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg are all featured in these chapters along with their films.

The volume then moves onto the world stage where Edward Buscombe explores the unique style of film output from Australasia, Africa, India, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America.

Specific film genres and trends of these regions are highlighted and discussed in relation to the social and economic climate of the time.

Many of these film industries, such as French, Indian and Japanese, are significant centres of world production.

In these chapters, Buscombe examines the Bollywood cinema of India, art house cinema of France, the British comedy, Japanese crime films and Mexican horror films.

The films of Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodovar, Akira Kurosawa, Roman Polanski, Luc Besson, Mike Leigh, Ousmane Sembene and Chen Kaige are just an example of the range of work discussed.