Arthur Penn : interviews /

Beginning in 1957 with the release of his directorial debut The Left Handed Gun , Arthur Penn (b. 1922) quickly became an iconoclastic and influential American film director. Moving deftly between comedy and tragedy, realism and absurdity, his films Mickey One , Bonnie and Clyde , Alice's Restaurant , Little Big Man , and Night Moves speak to the troubled times--the 1960s and 1970s--in which they were made while remaining timeless in their unsettling portrayal of characters on the margins of society.

Arthur Penn: Interviews is the first collection to explore every stage of the director's career. These conversations span forty-five years, from his first in-depth discussion with Cahiers du cinéma in 1963 to a new interview from 2007, and reveal Penn's ever-changing ideas on the nature of film and filmmaking. This volume also presents newly translated interviews from European film periodicals, published in English for the first time.