Filmographies are as old as film itself. Film lists appeared alongside those for lantern slides in sales and distribution catalogues of the late 19th century, each company trying to promote their own holdings to the market. As film production blossomed and spread around the world film listings have been produced in many formats satisfying different purposes and audiences, each reflective of the trends of their era. They provide evidence of national production and the desire to promote trade, and in some cases ideology, beyond a nation's border; the emergence of film studies with its gaze turned towards the rise in popularity of stars, filmmakers, film genres and the studios that produced them; a distinction between fiction and non-fiction; the importance of film and television archives and their holdings; and the desire of the audience for ease of access to such information – think IMDb!
In “The Guide to Movie Lists,” Howard Summers ambitiously sets out to create the first – that I am aware of – bibliography of published filmographies of both fiction and non-fiction films. I say ‘ambitiously’ because if you have ever created a bibliography of some size you will undoubtedly be in a position to relate to the difficulties associated with the enormity of the task the author set himself. The result is a reference work the reader can have to hand and consult with ease, bypassing the need for an appreciation of the peculiarities of individual or aggregated library catalogues and the effort of gathering the results.
It took ten years to collect the information into what is referred to in the title verso page as an unpublished ‘first edition’. It was then published as an e-book in 2017. The print edition, being reviewed here, was published a year later (2018). Both published editions are referred to as ‘second’ editions in the title verso page. It is not clear how many new titles were added to the published editions, but additions have certainly been made.
The book is issued in three volumes:
• Filmographies of the World (Volume 1)
• Genres, Subjects and Themes (Volume 2)
• Appendices (Volume 3)
All three volumes include the same introductory sections. These detail the purpose of the book, and the reasoning behind the layout for each entry. They also clarify the definitions of a ‘filmography’, ‘feature film’ and ‘country of origin’, and acknowledge the institutions and sources consulted. According to the introductory sections, and my own observations, entries are predominantly but not exclusively English language publications; and although they include formats such as CD-ROMs and websites, they are primarily print. Articles are included as are smaller publications, such as those of film festivals.
The definition of a ‘filmography’ is divided into two main types: catalogues and listings; and appendices to books or essays. Both are included but the latter inclusion is, sensibly, restricted to those which feature ‘extensive and/or detailed’ information. Excluded are ‘most unpublished works, film distributors’ catalogues, and ‘film festival catalogues and guides’. The biggest exclusion however is that of ‘personal’ filmographies – books which list the films of individual or collected actors and crew. It is not made clear whether these will form Volume 4 of a new revised edition but it is a significant omission.
The descriptions for most of the entries consist of bibliographic details, including page number totals, and have been annotated to contain ‘the number of films listed, a synopsis of the book's contents and a “typical entry layout” listing the filmographic details to be found in its film entries.’
Each volume covers a distinct area. The filmographies included in Volume 1 fall under the categories of ‘General’ and ‘National’ with the latter taking up 95 percent of the volume's 390 pages. Rather than a straightforward arrangement by country, national filmographies are divided into: ‘Major English-speaking countries’, ‘Europe’, ‘Eastern Europe’, ‘Scandinavia’, ‘Asia and the Pacific’, ‘The Arab world’, ‘Africa’, ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’, and ‘The Polar regions’. Regional filmographies are placed at the end of their respective national entry. For example, filmographies on Bavaria or Berlin appear after the main entries for Germany. Although a country index is provided at the end of the volume, it has to be said that navigation would have been much improved had individual pages displayed the section title – they currently display the volume title only – and the contents page been further divided into sub-sections. As it is, there's nothing to indicate that the entries for individual nations, from ‘Albania’ to the ‘Vatican City’, are to be found listed alphabetically after the section on ‘Scandinavia’ and before the section on ‘Asia and the Pacific’ rather than under the sections of the appropriate geographical area.
Volume 2 lists filmographies by ‘genres, subjects and themes’. There is no definition offered for each of these terms, but as the listing is alphabetical, perhaps that doesn't matter. A subject heading index is provided but, similar to Volume 1, and although sub-headings are used, they do not appear in the index. This means that for a popular section such as ‘Horror films’ you cannot navigate directly to the sub-heading sections of: ‘Demons’, ‘Monsters’, ‘The mummy’, ‘Splatter/gore’, ‘Vampires’, ‘Voodoo’, ‘Werewolves’ and ‘Zombies’.
I hope I am allowed, as a side note, to say how very pleased I was to see a section on ‘Bees & beekeeping’ as the single filmography listed there is a favourite of ours here at the BFI Reuben Library and often finds itself on display when we have visitors. Other fun subjects for which filmographies exist, and these are just selected from subjects beginning with the letter S, include: ‘Sadism’, ‘Scouting’, ‘Seat belts’, ‘Secretarial training’, ‘Selling and distributive occupations’, ‘Septic tanks’, ‘Staplers’, ‘Sugar’, ‘Suicide’ and ‘Survival’!
I was intrigued by the lack of an entry for the subject of ‘Vikings’, especially as there is book published on the subject which includes a filmography, and other titles by the author (Kevin J. Harty) are listed in Volume 3 of this work. It is possible that the number of films listed was not considered high enough; however, I would have thought that, as with other subject areas, where there is a lack of any significant published filmography, lesser ones would be included. The result is that, for this reviewer, it is difficult to judge how consistently the inclusion criteria have been applied and how comprehensive the listings are.
Subject headings are cross-referenced when necessary. For one entry, ‘Westerns’, the reader is directed to Volume 1 instead, which is a little bit strange considering other entries – for example entries from the subjects of ‘Science fiction’ and ‘Horror’– are listed both under ‘Country’ and ‘Subject’. The reasoning behind this choice, as given in the introduction, is that the genre of ‘Westerns’ was predominately produced in Hollywood and so those filmographies are listed in a ‘Westerns’ sub-section of the ‘United States’, and European productions are listed under ‘Italy’. Conversely, an entry which you would expect to find in Volume 3, ‘Shakespearean films’, is found in Volume 2.
This brings me to the third and final volume which is titled ‘Appendices’ but actually contains further groupings of filmographies. At 102 pages this is the smallest of all three volumes and is divided into the areas of: ‘Historical filmographies timeline’; ‘Fictitious characters’ filmographies’; ‘Filmographies of authors’ literary adaptations’; ‘A checklist of teleographies (T.V.)’; and also a list of Library of Congress Subject Headings containing a sub-section for ‘catalogs’ for which the Library of Congress has holdings.
The Historical Filmographies section is arranged by date and includes periods of time, specific events and both fictional and real personalities. Some examples are: ‘c.1250BC: Trojan war’, ‘c.1160-c.1247: Robin Hood’, ‘1412-1431: Joan of Arc’, ‘1912: The Titanic disaster’, ‘1945: Films released in 1945’, and ‘2000 - ???? : The future’. The ‘Fictitious characters’ section includes filmographies on film series that relate to single characters, such as ‘James Bond’, or a group of named characters, such as ‘The three musketeers’. However, series such as ‘Halloween’ and the ‘Carry on’ films (two examples provided by the author) are not included. Teleographies are arranged by country first and then subject, and, in comparison to the filmographies, not many are listed.
When considering the three volumes as a whole, I believe the author should be congratulated for bringing about such a mammoth task and for achieving a high level of accuracy in the data throughout. If there were to be a call for improvements, my first recommendations would be stylistic: the aforementioned top-of-the-page headings, the sub-sections in the contents and indices, the first line of each entry in bold. Regarding ease of navigation, I believe the work would benefit from an author/title back-of-the-book index in Volume 3. In addition, although it is never stipulated as an aim by the author, having gained an overview through his research of the breadth and range of filmographies published, some analysis and critical commentary would have been welcome.
At a time of social cataloguing applications such as Goodreads, LibraryThing and others, one may well ask if there is a need for such a work to be published. Well, yes, I do believe there is still a need for reference books. You can certainly find much information on the web but you're unlikely to be able to replicate the effort required to produce a well-researched comprehensive work combined with the element of trust afforded to a well-established publisher. Is there a need for reference works to be published in print format? Again, I would say yes. All publication formats, print included, have their advantages. Print appeals to our senses thus helping to make the experience more memorable, it is set – both physically and temporally – making it easy to dip into or browse and providing a snapshot at the time of publication, and it is easily accessible requiring in most cases no more than proximity. The reviewed volumes could happily grace the shelves of any film researcher or library, and they will definitely be on the shelves at the BFI Reuben Library should you be popping in to visit us at any time.
