The triple-Oscar winner of the Godfather films, Apocalypse Now and The English Patient presents a masterclass on movies and how they are made.

Highly lauded film editor, director, writer and sound designer Walter Murch reflects on the six decades of cinematic history he has been a considerable contributor to - and on what makes great films great.

Together with Francis Coppola and George Lucas, Murch abandoned Hollywood in 1969 and moved to San Francisco to create the Zoetrope studio. Their vision was of a new kind of cinema for a new generation of film-goers. Murch's subsequent contributions in film editing rooms and sound-mixing theatres were responsible for ground-breaking technical and creative innovations.

In this book, Murch invites readers on a voyage of discovery through film, with a mixture of personal stories, meditations on his own creative tactics and strategies, and reminiscences from working on The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Lucas' American Grafitti, and Anthony Minghella's The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley.

Suddenly Something Clicked is a book that will change the way you watch movies.

Details

ISBN13: 9780571328857
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 368
Edition: Main
Publication Date: 09 Sep 2025
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication City, Country: London,United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 24.6(H)x18.9(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Walter Murch is best known as the Sound Designer and Picture Editor of The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Julia and The English Patient. He has had a career in movies that stretches across fifty years, including his involvement in setting up Zeotrope studios with Francis Coppola and George Lucas in San Francisco in the late '60s. He lives between California and London.

Reviews

'This is an enormous book, a vast treasury of ideas, observations and inno-vation stretching from Physics to aesthetics. Only a mind like Walter Murch's could be capable of such a discourse. There is so much in it, it cannot really be described, only admired or kept as an Encyclopedia of Cinema-Everything.', Francis Ford Coppola


'Walter Murch's SUDDENLY SOMETHING CLICKED is a profound yet playful meditation on how editing is the engine of movies and what altered our way of thinking. Suddenly we were more than we had been before. Or was it less? Settle for DIFFERENT.', David Thomson