A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman
The American film directors featured here have created significant bodies of work. Notes Kolker (film studies, Univ. of Maryland),  for all the challenge and adventure, their films speak to a continual impotence in the world, an inability to change and to create change.  A fount of cinematic knowledge, the author provides the context for his subjects, persuasively arguing that Citizen Kane and Psycho hold pride of place as influences. He draws parallels between Leni Riefenstahl!s Triumph of the Will (1935) and Steven Spielberg!s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978), Alfred Hitchcock!s Marnie (1964) and Stanley Kubrick!s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and John Wayne!s Ethan Edwards in John Ford!s The Searchers (1956) and Robert DeNiro!s Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese!s Taxi Driver (1976). Evidently, the  cinema of loneliness  is not entirely new. Since the first and second editions, Francis Ford Coppola has been excised and Oliver Stone added. Essential for scholars and well-informed fans, the book is recommended for film and performing arts collections as well as for larger public libraries"Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PACopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.