
Suddenly Something Clicked
The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design
Walter Murch(Author)
Faber & Faber (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 8. May 2025
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-571-32885-7 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
'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
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 251 mm
Width: 192 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
1220 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-571-32885-7 (9780571328857)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2025
Faber & Faber
€30.99
Available for download
Person
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.