You like Bette Davis. You like Joan Crawford. But will you like Bette Davis AND Joan Crawford together in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
Another "Films and Filming" thread!...
Like "Sight and Sound", England's "Films and filming" was THE perfect magazine and had a good run from 1954 into the '90s. I discovered it in 1962 when I was 16 and and began getting some back copies. I have been using some of those attractive covers throughout my posts here. At its peak - the '60s and '70s issues - it introduced so many of us to the potential of cinema as just more than mere entertainment 
- it covered the best of world cinema with interviews and features on and by all the leading players and directors. That 1961 Italian cinema issue is priceless now with its features by Antonioni, Visconti, Fellini, Pasolini etc. Interesting too seeing how the magazine changed from the staid '50s through the liberated '60s (when being the zeitgeist that it was, it became THE magazine for gay cineastes) to the mature '70s. I could spend hours going through those bound copies...
- it covered the best of world cinema with interviews and features on and by all the leading players and directors. That 1961 Italian cinema issue is priceless now with its features by Antonioni, Visconti, Fellini, Pasolini etc. Interesting too seeing how the magazine changed from the staid '50s through the liberated '60s (when being the zeitgeist that it was, it became THE magazine for gay cineastes) to the mature '70s. I could spend hours going through those bound copies...
I worked for the magazine for a year in the '70s and got to know its late owner Philip Dosse, and editor Robin Bean. I am sure they would be pleased that their magazine is not forgotten! The umbrella company Hansom Books also published those high quality arts magazines Plays and Players, Arts and Artists, Books and Bookmen, Music and Musicians etc. Such a shame it folded in 1980.
Terrific covers - it must have been a terrific magazine, nice to have back copies. Looks like we had nothing like it in the USA.
ReplyDeleteThey were always provocative and/or tantalising covers. As a child, my Mother used to regularly take me to the cinema and when I was a teenager in the 1970's, she would bring home copies of "Films and Filming" from the local libraries in our area. I used to flip through them, too, and as an adult it's made me more appreciative and critical of cinema as an art form. Without "Films and Filming," I may have turned out to be just another passive movie consumer.
ReplyDeleteFilms & Filming was my cinema bible in the 1960s and 70s. I started buying it in September 1962 and continued until July 1974. During that time it introduced me to a range of films old and new. It made encouraged me to join a film society and travel to London to see films with limited distribution. I made a list of films I wanted to see from reading the accompanying articles on all aspects of the cinema and the people who starred in them. It was a great magazine and I supplemented them each with the annual Film Review by F. Maurice Speed. Now with DVDs I can watch all the films I couldn't reach then.
ReplyDelete