Peter Cowie's monograph is the perfect companion to Woody Allen's first masterpiece, and one of the best in the BFI Classics series. 'Annie Hall' is the film that marked Allen's transition from a sketch-based, spoof/parody comedian, to the sardonic romantic comic with pretensions to seriousness that has divided critics ever since. Cowie explains the various elements of this development: Allen's confidence, perhaps on turning 40, to rework autobiography; the absorbing and rethinking, rather than jokey ticking off, of influences (literary - Kafka, Dostoevsky, Max Shulman; European cinema - Bergman (whose confessional, intimate aesthetic Allen is credited with importing to the American cinema), Fellini, Godard; American silent comedy, especially Chaplin; the Jewish stand-up tradition); the crystallising of major themes (Jewish identity in a WASP culture; the romanticising of New York and the denigration of culturally braindead L.A.; the fragility of relationships and the debilitating effects of excessive self-consciousness etc.).

Most valuably, Cowie shows how Allen, beloved for his verbal dexterity, is actually a restlessly inventive and visual film-maker: 'Annie Hall' is his most tricksy and experimental film, playing with time, narration, gags, visual effects like his previous films, but here channelled into deepening the film's central relationship and surrounding ideas.

The major chapter, 'Inside Annie Hall' is a masterly mix of synopsis and insightful commentary, as alive to the lovable throwaway details as the resonant Big Themes and complex narrative structure. An appendix offers an invaluable glossary of the film's profuse cultural references, many of which now only survive thanks to 'Annie Hall'.

Well, this is it...

Bergman is notorioiusly difficult to sum up - we've had biographical, psychoanalytical, religious, aesthetic, God-knows-what-else approaches... But this book is about the best you'll get. Cowie, rightly regarded as an expert on Swedish (and Finnish9 film, provides a readable, informative and sensitive history. It has that perfect combination of enough fact for the uninitiated and enough interpretation for the devotee. As if that wasn't sufficient, it's been updated up to 1992 and contains lots of handsome images - not only of the great man and his entourage, but also of the films themslves, just right for stoking the embers of mnemory (especially if you haven't got a video-recorder...)

Quite simply an authoritative, genial account of a 'difficult' genius.

Hi, I'm goofy toofy. I read this book and thought it was o.k. But I don't plan on buying it for anyone as a present. Now, go on, get out of here.

Talk about bad timing. After years waiting for a good Apocalypse Now book, Peter Cowie's comes out, right around the same time as "Apocalypse Now Redux." The irony being that Cowie wrote the book in 2000, a full year before Coppola unveiled his reworked masterpiece. This means that, due to how long the publishing process takes, the book has hardly any information about Redux, which is a shame. As Cowie's interview with Coppola took place in 1999, there are no quotes or thoughts from the director about what lead him to create Redux.

That being said, the rest of the book is very informative, in some cases too informative. The background, pre-production detail is nearly staggering. I would have liked to have learned more about screenwriter John Milius' original script idea, "The Psychedelic Soldier," which, after he was inspired by the idea to do a modern tribute to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," became Apocalypse Now. Cowie, however, does do a great job of mentioning many of the early drafts of the script, even quoting from the rarely-seen first draft, in which the VC speak in goofy subtitles, and Colonel Kilgore is known as Colonel Kharnage.

The level of research Cowie has performed leaves me wondering over many glaring omissions. For example, the highlight of the book is a chapter titled "Buried Treasure," in which Cowie goes over the 5 ½ hour work print. Though he gives detailed descriptions of the major scenes that are in the work print, but were not included in the original version (or the Redux), there's no mention of the Photojournalist's death scene, which is a major revelation of the work print. Likewise, Cowie doesn't mention how deadly Martin Sheen's Willard is in the work print; for example, in it he kills a child in the climax.

Cowie also fails to cover little bits and pieces that are interesting in the film. For example, he doesn't mention that Lee Ermey, who would later make film history as the drill instructor in "Full Metal Jacket," plays one of Kilgore's helicopter pilots, during the beach raid sequence. And there is no detail about what scenes, exactly, Harvey Keitel filmed during the few weeks he spent on the set. But these little matters are trivial. The fact is, the book is a pretty good compendium of information about my favorite movie. There are no color photos, but there are some nice behind-the-scenes shots and stills, including a very nice one of Willard's head coming out of the swamp, enshrouded in fog.

The main thing I found interesting in the book was that cinematographer Storaro advised Coppola to end the movie on a pessimistic note. Watching one of the early edits, Storaro urged Coppola to integrate the scenes of Willard hacking at Kurtz with the caribou sacrifice, as well as the shots of Kurtz's compound exploding. The way Storaro envisioned it, Willard would kill Kurtz at the exact same time as the air strike, which would obliterate all of them. A very dark ending, but Coppola obviously didn't like it. The footage of Kurtz's compound being destroyed, by the way, is included as an extra on the Apocalypse Now (original version) DVD.

If you loved the movie (either version), you'll love this book. I got it in time to read before Apocalypse Now Redux came to the big screen. I'd previously read Eleanor Coppola's notes and Karl French's Bloomsbury Movie Guide (BMG #1). Notes concerns itself mainly wth the family stuff that the Coppolas were dealing with at the time the movie was being made. BMG #1 is more of an encyclopedic a-z that deals more with subjects. Cowie gets it right by going beyond this by delving into Francis Coppola's private archives to focus on the movie itself. Part one of the book is broken down into such topics as birth of the project, assembling the team, pre-production, the screenplay, shooting (phases 1-3), the perils of post-production, and at last - a movie! Part two of the book deals with the 5 ½-hour rough cut, the characters themselves, the contrasts of the film set in asia as opposed to Conrad's novel set in Africa, and conclusions. While the other 2 books did what they intended to do, the Apocalypse Now Book is more in-depth which will give you a better understanding as to what it took to get this awesome film made and to the big screen. The horror indeed.