Jean-Baptiste Thoret writes as a critic rather than a census-taker, treating genres as living structures that absorb political fear, technological change and shifts in how people imagine themselves.

It is a compact, heavily illustrated map of cinema history through the forms, movements and arguments that make film legible: noir, melodrama, the western, science fiction, animation, documentary, horror, the road movie, New Hollywood and the various mutations that followed.  The book is especially good at tracing inheritance. WALL-E sits inside a longer science-fiction tradition; Dark City, Blade Runner and The Matrix become descendants of film noir rather than isolated cult objects. The plentiful stills are not decorative ballast but part of the argument, allowing recurring images, spaces and visual codes to become visible across decades.

Accessible without being condescending, it works equally well as an introduction for someone building a language for film and as a reference book for a more seasoned viewer who wants the whole unruly family tree laid out at once. This is the English-language edition, translated from the French by David Radzinowicz, and was published by Flammarion in 2012.

Flammarion, 2012. Large-format illustrated paperback. Light shelf wear and minor rubbing to covers; internally clean and bright.