The book under review 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die edited by Steven Jay Schneider gives you details of 1001 famous movies released between 1900 and 2016.
It is an elaborate work and a film lover’s dream.
It chronicles the entire history of cinema spread over hundred years.
Choosing 1001 films from thousands of films is itself a research work and this was done by the author in a fantastic way.
How these films are chosen? First, from various best films, top hundred films, top ten movies lists 1300 films were selected. After going through the list again and again it was cut short to 1001 movies.
The films list is given alphabetically at the beginning of the book.
For example if you choose Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, a 1998 film, you will get all the details.
Run Lola Run is an interesting, unusual film making experiment that has humor, breathless excitement and tremendous energy all tightly packaged into an MTV generation movie by the fresh talent of its writer-director.
The film shows the twenty minute story of Lola in three different times each subtly different in a manner that delivers three different outcomes. A beautiful innovative film’s full details are given in a fitting manner.
Like this you may read about one thousand and one best films and start viewing one by one before your death.
The Genre index given at the end of the book covers 22 subjects namely Action, Adventure, Animation, Avant-Garde, Comedy, Crime, Docu-drama, Documentary, Drama, Experimental, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Musical, Mystery, Noir, Romance, Sci-fi, Short, Thriller, War and Western.
The directors index gives you details about 596 famous director including Cecil B. Demille, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg etc.
War films such The Bridge on the river Kwai (1957), The Great Escape (1963), Gone with the Wind (1939) needs to be specially mentioned here.
However we are not able to find the famous war films such The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten from Navarone etc.
Movies like The Italian Job are also not covered in this list.
Perhaps if we have to include all the films the title will become 10001 Movies you must see before you die!
Scientific Fiction films are also narrated elaborately.
The book is printed very neatly in art paper. Hundreds of illustration makes the reader very happy.
We may see and choose our favorite stars, Directors and we could make our own list based on our interest.
More than hundred years, the film field in one of the most entertaining one and we can’t imagine a world without movies now.
So we have to congratulate the General Editor Steven Jay Schneider for 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die his painstaking work. He is a film critic, Scholar, and producer. He has written many books on the Cinematic arts.
Happy viewing of 1001 Movies!
by Santhanam Nagarajan
