Why exactly was Citizen Kane such a revolutionary film? What are the hallmarks of Italian Neorealism? How do directors sew together a smooth scene from five or six different shots? Fabe answers these questions and more in this primer on the narrative structure of filmmaking, which analyzes 14 benchmark movies from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to Mike Figgis’s Timecode. (Since each film was selected to represent a significant cinematic movement—expressionism, postmodernism, French New Wave, etc.—the book also doubles as a concise history of film’s most innovative storytellers.)