“It has the shape of boy meets girl, gets girl, and loses girl, and then gets to go magma-headedly, mad love crazy…The real connection for me comes from the climax of the movie, when Gaston Modot has lost Lya to another, even older man. He’s just completely molten-headed with jealousy and despair, and he starts throwing flaming pine trees out the window. He starts ripping apart pillows and walking around with handfuls of feathers. He’s doing all the things that I felt I had just done just earlier that year when I had been dumped and walked around with a plow in my living room”
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"If you love films and care about filmmakers, you'll have a hard time putting this book down. These lively conversations reveal just how much one generation of filmmakers influences the next - and how a single movie can change the course of a young person's life and career."
-Leonard Maltin, author of Leanord Martin's Movie Guide -
"A great and provocative read. Elder begins with a simple question and leads a wide variety of filmmakers down all sorts of unexpected paths. Why do we respond so passionately, even irrationally, to the movies that change our lives? The wonderful thing about being a critic or a lifelong movie lover is that life changes all the time in relation to the spells being cast on the screen. Elder's book honors that alchemic relationship many times over. It's addictive."
-Michael Phillips, film critic, Chicago Tribune