Book
The New Confessions
John James Todd, born in Edinburgh in 1899, looks back on a life shaped by cinema, war and an unshakeable belief in his own artistic importance. The First World War takes him to the Western Front, first as a soldier and then with a camera, giving him the experience that will turn filmmaking into his central obsession.
Todd’s pursuit of an ambitious screen version of Rousseau’s Confessions carries him into the experimental film culture of Weimar Berlin and later Hollywood. He becomes a war correspondent during the Second World War and, after returning to America, is caught in the anti-communist investigations of the post-war years. His self-portrait is comic, unreliable and expansive, but the historical pressures around him continually reshape what he can make of his life.
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