Throughout Phil Hall's survey, one is repeatedly struck by how many movies were independently produced: Griffith’s Intolerance, entire specialist markets ranging from “race movies” to Yiddish-language productions, and even James Cameron’s first Terminator.

Assistant director Tom Reilly's labor of love, a lifetime’s experience generously distilled into practical advice for assistant directors—tyros and old hands alike.

In these interviews, well chosen by editor Steven Organ, Lean also addresses the perceived divide between his early, intimate British work and his later, expansive inter-national epics.

Finally a biography of Hal Ashby, who made a series of remarkable movies during the 1970s before falling into disfavor and dying at 59. Ashby is the lost man of the Hollywood Renaissance.

As this Taschen volume makes clear, the Master of Suspense remains appealing to cineastes young and old, with 50-plus features underscoring his timeless ingenuity.

Author Gwenda Young makes the case that from the silent era to the golden age, Clarence Brown deserves a place among the giants.

Director Ernst Lubitsch, who was idolized by Wilder and Welles, is brought into sharp focus.

The making of George Stevens' Texas-sized epic is recounted in Don Graham's meticulously chronicled book.

As the newly scaled down yet no less comprehensive Taschen book Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made demonstrates, Kubrick was nothing if not a completist.