Mamoulian (Paperback)

With a foreword by Geoff Andrew, Tom Milne's classic study explores a director who combined technical originality with a uniquely poetic visual style

The great Armenian-American director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-87) remains a favourite among filmmakers, his films combining great technical originality with a uniquely poetic visual style.

Mamoulian's technical innovations are evident from his first film, Applause (1923), in which he incorporated two separate soundtracks into one printing, thus overcoming the difficulty of sound levels that had frustrated the pioneer directors of 'talkies', and in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931), in which he used synthetic sound painted directly onto the soundtrack.

Such inventive solutions to filmmaking challenges were linked to Mamoulian's abiding sense of the magic of the cinema. He used colour as a dramatic ingredient in the first three-strip Technicolour film, Becky Sharp (1935), and his musicals Summer Holiday (1948) and Silk Stockings (1957) were remarkable in their time for the way in which the dance was used to enhance the drama and to illuminate character. And for Garbo, in Queen Christina (1933), he created the framework for her greatest role.

Tom Milne's classic study, first published in 1969, provides a film-by-film analysis of Mamoulian's career and challenges widespread critical assumptions about the director's oeuvre. In his foreword to this most recent edition, the BFI's Geoff Andrew recognises Milne's careful and insightful analysis of Mamoulian's expressive and imaginative style and asks whether this unique director ought to be considered as an auteur. Andrew also pays tribute to Milne's elegant, witty and eclectic critical style and hails him as one the most important and influential British writers on film.