Sontag on Film

Widely regarded as one of America's most important contemporary thinkers, Susan Sontag had a particular gift for reflecting on the meaning and influence of the visual, and "On Photography" became a seminal work for all those concerned with the interplay of images with the world. Now, more than thirty years after "On Photography" was first published, comes "Sontag on Film": a collection of her writings and musings on films and cinema, gathered together here for the very first time by critic David Thomson and producer Tom Luddy. Inspired, vigorous and enlightening, the collection includes lucid discussions of the intersection between film and literature; in-depth studies of films and directors; and other such delightful and illuminating fragments as a list of Sontag's top-ten films taken from a 1982 issue of "Sight and Sound". "Sontag on Film" is set to become a key work on the importance and significance of cinema in the modern world. Praise for "Susan Sontag": "What ultimately matters about Sontag ...is what she has defended: the life of the mind, and the necessity for reading and writing as "a way of being fully human"". (Hilary Mantel, "Los Angeles Times Book Review"). "Intellectually and imaginatively gifted to an extraordinary degree, she used her fearless intelligence to illuminate some of the deepest contradictions of contemporary life". (John Gray, "New Statesman"). "Complex and contradictory ...one of America's greatest public intellectuals". ("Observer"). Susan Sontag's books include four novels and numerous works of non fiction, among them "Regarding the Pain of Others", "On Photography", "Illness as Metaphor", "At the Same Time" and "Against Interpretation and Other Essays". Two volumes of her diaries, "Reborn" and "As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh", are also available from Hamish Hamilton/ Penguin.