For nearly half a century Philip French's writing on cinema has been essential reading for filmgoers, cinephiles and anyone who enjoys witty, intelligent engagement with the big screen. His vast knowledge of the medium is matched by his love for it....

"Westerns" is the classic account of the emergence, growth and flowering of one of the most perennially popular film genres. When it was first published thirty years ago it was welcomed by reviewers in Europe and the United States as a major work. In...

At the time of its birth just over a century ago, the cinema was greeted as a kind of universal language – the first one that mankind had enjoyed since the complications of Babel and their aftermath. But this universal language soon developed a speci...