Launder and Gilliat

[orpheum]

I have been thinking about buying a book on this team which brought us many fine British films.One by Geoff Brown was issued by the BFI in 1977 in conjunction with the programme on them at the NFT.the other by a professor is very much more expensive and uses the dreaded word "contextuliastion"in its description.This sounds as if the dead hand of academia has penned it.So has anybody read one or both books and what would they recommend.

[CaptainWaggett]

I have been thinking about buying a book on this team which brought us many fine British films.One by Geoff Brown was issued by the BFI in 1977 in conjunction with the programme on them at the NFT.the other by a professor is very much more expensive and uses the dreaded word "contextuliastion"in its description.This sounds as if the dead hand of academia has penned it.So has anybody read one or both books and what would they recommend.

I've read both and I'd say you'd enjoy the Geoff Brown one more. Basically he goes through every film they were involved in and says what they did including films that didn't get made and films where one of them was brought into do two weeks rewrite. (Gilliat was around and makes a lot of contributions to the book, saying exactly what he did. You get the impression it would be easier to list the 1930s films he didn't work on ) The other one is by a chap I did film classes with a long time ago and he was rather fun then but his books are fairly dull (and he says almost nothing about their pre-war career or some of their most famous creations. I found it fairly unreadable.



Geoff Brown wrote another book in silmilar style about John Baxter which I'd also recommend.

[orpheum]

thanks for that most helpful.I do have the book on John Baxter which i found thoroughly engrossing,particularly the screenplay for the lost film.

[CaptainWaggett]

thanks for that most helpful.I do have the book on John Baxter which i found thoroughly engrossing,particularly the screenplay for the lost film.

The L and G book is very similar but, of course, with better films!