Grand Masters

This chapter deals with legends, with three filmmakers who so mastered their art that they became inimitable. Welles is the most misunderstood of the three, and the chapter shows that rather than a one hit wonder, he went on, under difficult circumstances, to make more complex, more challenging films than Citizen Kane . Hitchcock was a master of cinematic formalism, his best work creating movements and angles that say as much or more than the dialogue spoken by his characters. Kubrick spoke of the perils of masculinity in images and narratives often filled with dread and loss.