12-Hour Film Expert

Noah Charney, PhD is the internationally best-selling author of more than a dozen books, translated into fourteen languages, including The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art, which was nominated for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and Museum of Lost Art, which was the finalist for the 2018 Digital Book WorldAward. He is a professor of art history specializing in art crime, and has taught for Yale University, Brown University, American University of Rome, and University of Ljubljana. He is founder of ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a ground-breaking research group, and teaches on their annual summer-long Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection. He writes regularly for dozens of major magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Observer,and The Art Newspaper. His other books published by Rowman & Littlefield include The Devil in the Gallery: How Scandal, Shock and Rivalry Shaped the Art World ; Making It: The Artist’s Survival Guide; The 12-Hour Art Expert: Everything You Need To Know About Art in a Dozen Masterpieces; and Gold Wine. He lives in Slovenia with his wife, children and their hairless dog, Hubert van Eyck. Learn more at www.noahcharney.com. James Charney, MD has loved movies since taking the first class in film history offered at Columbia College. He became the very definition of an amateur: a self-taught lover of film, film history, and film craft and ultimately developed a popular seminar at Yale College called Madness at the Movies. He has given talks on film history and taught courses and workshops based on the Yale seminar at The American University in Rome, Arcadia University in Rome, The University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, and the Yale Alumni College, and it is the basis of his first book, Madness at the Movies (2023). He and his wife, Diane, spend half the year in New Haven, Connecticut, where he continues to teach in the Medical School at Yale, and half the year at their home in Umbria, Italy, to be near their son, Noah, and his wife and 2 daughters who all share his passion for the movies.

Noah Charney and his film seminar developer/facilitator father, James, team up to help readers watch films thoughtfully, encouraging a focus on the industry’s history and path-breaking productions rather than treating films as passive entertainment. They select movies from the U.S. and abroad and across a variety of genres. Each of the book’s 12 chapters is designed to be an hour’s worth of reading. Categories include the invention of film, silent movies, classics, Westerns, film noir, comedies, musicals, suspense, horror, action, sci-fi/fantasy, and international auteur-centered art films…. This gateway book will deepen readers’ appreciation of milestone movies. A variety of readers, not just film fans, will want to peruse this engaging title.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: The Invention of the Movies A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train RobberyChapter 2: The Golden Age of Silent MoviesThe Gold Rush, Sunrise, or A Song of Two HumansChapter 3: Classic HollywoodCasablanca, Citizen KaneChapter 4: The WesternStagecoach, The Searchers, Red RiverChapter 5: Film NoirDouble Indemnity, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, ChinatownChapter 6: ComedyBringing Up Baby, Airplane!, When Harry Met SallyChapter 7: MusicalsTop Hat, Singing in the Rain, Moulin RougeChapter 8: SuspenseThe Wages of Fear, The Birds, The Italian JobChapter 9: HorrorCat People, Halloween, The BabadookChapter 10: ActionThe Bourne Identity, Nobody, Run Lola RunChapter 11: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Superhero FilmsX-Men, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s StoneChapter 12: International Art HouseBicycle Thieves, Seven Samurai, NostalghiaThe Movie PlaylistBehind the Scenes Movie Job TitlesRecommended ReadingNotesIndexAbout the Authors