The Extraordinary Image takes readers on a fascinating journey through the lives and films of three great directors-Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Stanley Kubrick-seeking to identify the qualities that made them cinematic visionaries. Offering a deeply personal set of reflections on three artists who have changed the way he understands movies, acclaimed scholar Robert P. Kolker leads readers on an exploration of how movies work, what they mean, and why they bring us so much pleasure.