Серия книг «Movie Icons» — 19 книг

"Forget everything you think you know about this person," Elia Kazan cautioned, in his autobiography. The icon we cherish under the name Marilyn Monroe was in truth the inspired creation of a smart, voluptuous, star struck and self-motivated fantasist named Norma Jean Mortenson. A pure product of Hollywood, she abides across time as brightly as two other self-inventors, Charlie Chaplin and Cary Grant. Few things make an afterlife blaze more mythically than a sexual reputation-ask Cleopatra. Norma Jean paid a huge price to become Marilyn, yet here she is - still setting the bar high for all other would - be goddesses.

"Forget everything you think you know about this person," Elia Kazan cautioned, in his autobiography. The icon we cherish under the name Marilyn Monroe was in truth the inspired…

Ingrid Bergman was born beautiful, but, unusually for one so blessed, she knew that beauty is never enough. She wanted to be great as well.
Did any movie star of the classic era demonstrate more ambition? On the stage, she performed Strindberg, Ibsen, Turgenev, Shaw, and O'Neill - some several times. On television she acted in Zweig, Henry James, and Cocteau, and in movies there was Joan of Arc (1948) and a relentless film for Ingmar Bergman, Autumn Sonata (1978).
Those stage performances were acclaimed in their time, but they are gone. What is left is a succession of films recording an indelible combination of profoundly female beauty with stolid peasant strength - a tawny sensuality that made her particularly adept at portraying capitulation to desire.
No leading lady ever melted into her leading men more convincingly, yet Bergman never seemed to be fully emotionally involved with any of her three husbands. She needed romance more than she believed in love, which is why she had affairs with so many strongly masculine men: Gary Cooper, Victor Fleming, Robert Capa, Yul Brynner, and Anthony Quinn.
Orphaned at the age of 12, she transferred the child's need for parental security to her profession. The film set - the warming lights, the easy camaraderie of the crew, the affectionate regard of her fellow actors - was always more meaningful, more rewarding than real life.
Her on-screen emotional dynamic was a canny inversion of the normal pattern. From Miriam Hopkins to Katharine Hepburn to Bette Davis, the preferred method was to establish the actress as a strong-willed woman with a personality of her own who is gradually softened and seduced by the devastating charms of the leading man and the demands of the plot. Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

Ingrid Bergman was born beautiful, but, unusually for one so blessed, she knew that beauty is never enough. She wanted to be great as well.
Did any movie star of the classic era…

Humphrey Bogart is a legend and an icon whose magic has not dissipated with time. The wounded tough guy image Bogart molded over the decades of his career still resonates. There is a truth to this image; audiences sense that the world-weariness, the angst, and the vulnerability, which made him an icon of noir as well, were rooted somehow in reality. Even if the spectator knew nothing about his personal life, they believed and still do believe in his performances in cinema classics like "Casablanca", "The Maltese Falcon", "High Sierra", "The Big Sleep", "In a Lonely Place", and "The African Queen".

Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

Humphrey Bogart is a legend and an icon whose magic has not dissipated with time. The wounded tough guy image Bogart molded over the decades of his career still resonates. There…

He's the most self-invented man in movies, this side of Charlie Chaplin. Like Chaplin, Cary Grant grew up poor, trained as an acrobat, and brims with confidence, romance, and a spirit of merry larceny - he just has a better tailor. His impeccable timing and light, cat burglar's touch at stealing women's hearts were perfect for the jaunty heroics and romantic farce of such classic films as An Affair to Remember, Notorious, His Girl Friday, North by Northwest, Bringing up Baby, and To Catch a Thief. In the end, the role became the man-he had ceased to play "Cary Grant" and simply was Cary Grant. One could wish no man any greater happiness than that.

He's the most self-invented man in movies, this side of Charlie Chaplin. Like Chaplin, Cary Grant grew up poor, trained as an acrobat, and brims with confidence, romance, and a…

James Dean died at the age of 24, yet half a century later his mystique is unfaded. Had luck favored him that fatal evening, he might still be with us, an actor in the same generation as Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and Sean Connery. His phenomenally charismatic performances in such classics as Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden have immortalized him as a cinematic great. Dean also had serious ambitions of becoming a writer-director, and it is haunting to imagine what he might have done if his life had not been cut short. He remains such icon of gifted youth: even 50 years after his death, we still look at James Dean in full suspense, wondering how he's going to turn out.
Издание на английском, немецком, французском языках.

James Dean died at the age of 24, yet half a century later his mystique is unfaded. Had luck favored him that fatal evening, he might still be with us, an actor in the same…

Marlene Dietrich once said, "I am not a myth." But by referencing the term, Dietrich only reinforces the fact more emphatically. For, using almost any common dictionary definition of that word, Dietrich is a myth. Her image was fashioned by director Josef von Sternberg in films like The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, and The Scarlet Empress, after which she maintained a Hollywood career that included Destry Rides Again, Rancho Notorious, and an accomplished performance in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. She has been an object of worship to millions throughout the decades, up to and including this jaded, post-modern 21st century. She is the "intellectual's pin up girl," as author Herman G.Weinberg called her, of filmmakers and film critics alike. She is the "Monstre Sacre" as one of her recent biographers has labeled her. She is her own "Superior Product," (her daughter's words) manufactured and refined in her fertile brain. In other words, Marlene Dietrich is an icon for all ages.

Marlene Dietrich once said, "I am not a myth." But by referencing the term, Dietrich only reinforces the fact more emphatically. For, using almost any common dictionary definition…

Elizabeth Taylor was a "diva" when that word still had meaning, before it was applied to every female celebrity with slightest bit of attitude and style. She was also one of the first actors to be raised to celebrity status by the media for the dramatic conflicts of her personal life as much as for any thespian achievements on the screen. In a time when studios controlled the news that was fed to the media about their valuable "properties," Taylor's expansive personality and rollercoaster personal life was way too extravagant and exciting to be contained by the spin doctors of Hollywood.

Elizabeth Taylor was a "diva" when that word still had meaning, before it was applied to every female celebrity with slightest bit of attitude and style. She was also one of the…

Elvis Presley would have been the first to laugh at the mad, godlike status he attained after death, but he would have surely identified with the human, gospel-haunted need such adoration rises out of. He shared that need, and courted it. He could sing and move with a spellbinding violence and grace. Yet his nature was also marked by a startling passivity-an eerily contented lack of ambition at his essence that kept him from growing after his first fiery years of success. That early fire still burns, nevertheless, and his mythical figure remains an omnipresent fixture today.

Elvis Presley would have been the first to laugh at the mad, godlike status he attained after death, but he would have surely identified with the human, gospel-haunted need such…

Long before he was Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra was a child of the jazz age and its free-wheeling approach to life. In the course of a meteoric rise from singing waiter to the world's first pop star, Sinatra relied on his own version of keeping it simple: "I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life or the answer to life. I just go on from day to day taking what comes". As an entertainer Sinatra was both a visionary and a pragmatist, a prototype for the 20th century, who realized in the end that "You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough".

Long before he was Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra was a child of the jazz age and its free-wheeling approach to life. In the course of a meteoric rise from singing waiter to…

Greta Garbo's uniquely photogenic beauty belies her great talent as an actress, as her performances in "Queen Christina" and "Camille" prove. A hint of a Garbo smile, touch, or glance conveyed volumes. She was languid, distant, and melancholy, yet in her love scenes she conveyed a passion and hunger that startled audiences and overturned American notions of eroticism and sexuality. Part of her fascination, too, is the mystery of her private lives and loves: "I want to be alone," she insisted, but she remains the world's divine woman. "The Movie Icon" series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life. All the icons in the first 20 books of the series were voted for by over 7500 Taschen readers in a special online poll!
Формат: 14,5 см х 20 см.

Greta Garbo's uniquely photogenic beauty belies her great talent as an actress, as her performances in "Queen Christina" and "Camille" prove. A hint of a Garbo smile, touch, or…

From birth, Katharine Hepburn seemed destined to become a symbol of the modern woman on stage, on screen, and in the world. Fiercely competitive, private, and independent, Hepburn was one part Olympic athlete Babe Didrikson, one part Amelia Earhart, and two parts Greta Garbo. Although often paired with the greatest actors in Hollywood-Humphrey Bogart (The African Queen); Cary Grant (Bringing Up Baby), James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story), and Spencer Tracy (Adam's Rib, Woman of the Year) - Hepburn was able to carry her own films like Summertime, Little Women, and Sylvia Scarlett over a stage and screen career that spanned eight decades. Her home was never in Hollywood (where she won four Oscars) or New York but in Connecticut, where she died lamenting "I could have accomplished three times as much. I haven't realized my full potential." Издание на немецком, французском и английском языках. Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

From birth, Katharine Hepburn seemed destined to become a symbol of the modern woman on stage, on screen, and in the world. Fiercely competitive, private, and independent, Hepburn…

How do we even describe the alienated beauty of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, Don Juan DeMarco, Captain Jack Sparrow and Sweeney Todd, apart from the prodigious gift of Johnny Depp? How do we even name these great characters in one sentence, except under the heading of his contrary, heat-seeking curiosity, and imagination? If he didnt exist, you would need at least six other actors to achieve what he has thus far in his career. Few are so angelically androgynous and masculine in the same breath. From teen hearth-throb to an accomplished actor who has worked with art house directors such as Emir Kusturica, Terry Gilliam, Roman Polanski, Jim Jarmusch, and John Waters, Depp has built himself wildly successful and unconventional career. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars.

How do we even describe the alienated beauty of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, Don Juan DeMarco, Captain Jack Sparrow and Sweeney…

The top female box-office star of 1954, Grace Kelly's status as icon takes in an 11-film, three-year, screen career and a glamorous later life as Princess of Monaco. More than any other star, she was in three memorable films the quintessential Hitchcock blonde, delineating traits of cool beauty, depths of hidden passion, intelligence, playfulness, and style - in short, the qualities that led biographer James Spada to call her "the pious man's Marilyn." Yet Grace Kelly also showed her versatility and won her acting honors for playing against type in the title role in the grimly realistic movie "The Country Girl". Grace Kelly was a classic beauty, a public figure, and serious actress representative of an era. "The Movie Icon" series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.
Формат: 14,5 см х 20 см.

The top female box-office star of 1954, Grace Kelly's status as icon takes in an 11-film, three-year, screen career and a glamorous later life as Princess of Monaco. More than any…

In terms of celebrity icons, few attained the highest levels of fame and controversy as rapidly as Mae West. Labeled a "pornographer" by censorship boards, she was also one of 1930s Hollywood's most lucrative box-office draws (causing Variety in 1933 to label the star "as hot an issue as Hitler"). Nicknamed by critic George Jean Nathan "the Statue of Libido" and paid homage to in the title song of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, her voluptuous image and signature platinum blond air became recognizable worldwide and for decades beyond her prime years of fame in the 1930s. In fact, even by the 1960s when the Beatles wanted to use her image on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, those long-haired icons of a new generation were required to deliver a handwritten plea to the icon (which they dutifully did), since West herself always objected, as she said, to belonging to any "lonely hearts club".
Издание на английском, немецком, французском языках.

In terms of celebrity icons, few attained the highest levels of fame and controversy as rapidly as Mae West. Labeled a "pornographer" by censorship boards, she was also one of…

The Marx Brothers - Groucho, Chico, Harpo and sometimes Zeppo - spent over 2O years perfecting their comic timing in vaudeville routines and Broadway theatre revues before becoming one of cinema's most successful comedy teams. They made 13 films together between 1929 and 1949, including Duck Soup (19ЗЗ), A Night at the Opera (1935), and A Day at the Races (1937), and appeared separately in dozens of additional film and television roles.
Groucho is immediately recognizable with his big cigar, bushy eyebrows, greasepaint moustache and stooped walk. He would impersonate authority figures in a way that lampooned their pomposity, whether as Captain Jeffrey T.Spaulding, Dr. Hugo Z.Hackenbush or Attorney J.Cheever Loophole, Brother Zeppo played the straight man to wisecracking Groucho, taking a relentless ribbing. Groucho once said, "The only surefire way to test out a new gag was to try it out on Zeppo. If he liked it, we threw it out." Despite the fact that Zeppo, with his handsome profile and manly tenor voice, also got to play the romantic lead, he eventually left the act after five films, saying "I'm sick and tired of being the stooge." His newspaper obituary later described him as 'the Marx Brother who got the girl but never the gags.' Another famous foil for Groucho's humor was Margaret Dumont, who for seven films played a high-society lady subjected to Groucho's insults and innuendoes: "There are many bonds that will hold us together throughout eternity - your government bonds, your savings bonds, your Liberty bonds." "Would you mind giving me a lock of your hair? I'm letting you off easy. I was going to ask for the whole wig." Groucho always insisted that what made Dumont such a perfect straight woman was her bewilderment - she never understood his jokes. He praised her highly in calling her "practically the fifth Marx Brother." Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

The Marx Brothers - Groucho, Chico, Harpo and sometimes Zeppo - spent over 2O years perfecting their comic timing in vaudeville routines and Broadway theatre revues before…

A few years before he was an actor, McQueen was a juvenile delinquent. A few years before he was a movie star, McQueen was a towel boy in a brothel. A few years before he commanded $3 million fees and gross points, McQueen raced motorcycles on weekends because he needed the prize money.
McQueen's life was full of emotional contradictions: he was fanatically loyal but unrelentingly paranoid; devoted but faithless; a bastard seeking legitimacy; an early environmentalist and perennial chauvinist; famous worldwide and desperate for anonymity and solitude. An actor schooled in method but grounded outside of any process, he pared away all pretension, imbuing his characters with a vitality that was never just about what he said or how he looked but the way he did it. His performances were effortless yet powerful, raw yet complex. At a level beyond easy analysis, McQueen connected with the people who saw him on television, in movie houses, anywhere on earth. Even at the peak of his celebrity, one might as easily get a glimpse of him on a stool in a neighborhood bar or in an unemployment line as on a magazine cover, which is why he was perceived not merely as cool but as entirely authentic.
On screen he was defiant without swagger, disdainful without hatred, smoothly sexual without the hearts and flowers. McQueen took being hip to a new place while he took earning money in Hollywood to new heights. Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

A few years before he was an actor, McQueen was a juvenile delinquent. A few years before he was a movie star, McQueen was a towel boy in a brothel. A few years before he…

Most moviegoers associate actor Robert De Niro with adjectives like intense, violent, streetwise, and brooding. It is an image that De Niro has carefully nurtured over the last fifty years of his career. He used gesture, voice, and, most importantly, his mesmerizing eyes to convey to the audience the disturbing emotions with which he imbued his characters, from his earliest films like "Mean Streets" through classic portraits of violent, disaffected men like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" and Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" to the maniacal father in "Meet the Parents". For in De Niros world, art and reality are often indistinguishable. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. Формат издания: 14,5 см х 20 см.

Most moviegoers associate actor Robert De Niro with adjectives like intense, violent, streetwise, and brooding. It is an image that De Niro has carefully nurtured over the last…

Woody Allen began his career writing jokes and scripts, then progressed to stand-up and acting, and finally wrote and directed his first film, Take the Money and Run, in 1969. This was a screwball comedy that starred Allen as a hapless and self-demeaning schlemiel who bumbles his way through preposterous and hilarious situations. His first serious recognition as a filmmaker came with the Oscar he was awarded for Annie Hall in 1977. Allen progressed from joke comedy to psychological comedy with films like Manhattan, Stardust Memories, and Hannah and Her Sisters. Allens work has also come to reveal the poignant emotional mix of tragicomedy in the charm and fantasy of The Purple Rose of Cairo, the nostalgia of Radio Days, the multiple plots of Crimes and Misdemeanors, and the bittersweet tone of Alice. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. Формат: 14,5 см x 20 см.

Woody Allen began his career writing jokes and scripts, then progressed to stand-up and acting, and finally wrote and directed his first film, Take the Money and Run, in 1969.…

How do we even describe the alienated beauty of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, Don Juan DeMarco, Captain Jack Sparrow and Sweeney Todd, apart from the prodigious gift of Johnny Depp? How do we even name these great characters in one sentence, except under the heading of his contrary, heat-seeking curiosity, and imagination? If he didnt exist, you would need at least six other actors to achieve what he has thus far in his career. Few are so angelically androgynous and masculine in the same breath. From teen hearth-throb to an accomplished actor who has worked with art house directors such as Emir Kusturica, Terry Gilliam, Roman Polanski, Jim Jarmusch, and John Waters, Depp has built himself wildly successful and unconventional career. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars.

How do we even describe the alienated beauty of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, Don Juan DeMarco, Captain Jack Sparrow and Sweeney…