MI6 previews a new book that examines the art of legendary James Bond production designer Sir Ken Adam...

Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design
21st July 2005

A new book to celebrate the work of legendary James Bond production designer Sir Ken Adam will be published in September. MI6 has a look ahead at the new publication.

Ken Adam is acknowledged as the world's greatest living production designer: creator of the look of the James Bond films, winner of Oscars for Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and the film version of Alan Bennett's The Madness of King George. Now he explains his own scarcely understood contribution to the art of cinema.

Ken Adam is a German who left Germany in the 1930s - and his work was heavily influenced by the German Expressionist cinema of that time. After serving in the RAF during the war, he became involved in production design in 1948, getting his first Art Director credit on Around the World in Eighty Days in 1956. Since then he has designed 75 films, creating the bold and revolutionary designs for the first seven James Bond movies, as well as the startling war room in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

Since 1999 an exhibition of Adam's work has been travelling around the world, but the force and variety of his achievements in cinema have not been properly acknowledged until this volume, in which Christopher Frayling expertly conducts a career-length interview with a man whose designs have enriched some of the great films of our time.

UK Pre-Order (September 15th 2005)
USA Pre-Order (December 27th 2005)

 
Above: Book cover art


Above: Author Sir Christopher Frayling
 

About The Author
Sir Christopher Frayling is Rector and Professor of Cultural History at the Royal College of Art and chairman of the Arts Council. For Faber he has previously written Vampyres, The Face of Tutankhamun, and Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death

Can't wait until the book is released? Film publication Cinema Retro secured an exclusive with Sir Christopher Frayling, who provides excerpts from his interviews with production designer Ken Adam in which the making of Dr. No is discussed in detail - all in the latest issue. Click here to visit the official Cinema Retro magazine website for further information.

Book Data Stream
Paperback 320 pages
Publisher: Faber and Faber
ISBN: 0571220576

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