A History of Narrative Film

Abstract

A CURSORY EXAMINATION of the Third edition of David Cook's film history already reveals an impressive publication. The more then a thousand pages of dense text include 1,500 colour and monochrome illustrations, a glossary with 250 terms, a bibliography of over 2,000 titles on the history and theory of cinema, and an extensive index. This new edition does not fundamentally change Cook's approach used in the earlier editions (1981 and 1990) -- it simply makes the good even better. Examining narrative film medium's history from its inception up to the mid 1990s, Cook has thoroughly updated the entire text, including the bibliography; he has also added several new sections, such as those on ethnic cinema, Scandinavian and New Spanish cinema. Particularly commendable is the inclusion of many inadequately explored or neglected spots on the world film map: Baltic (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia); Transcaucasian (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan); Central Asian (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...