Film Theory and Criticism

by Braudy, Leo; Cohen, Marshall

• ISBN13: 9780195365627
• ISBN10: 0195365623
• Edition: 7th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Since publication of the first edition in 1974, Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen's Film Theory and Criticism has been the most widely used and cited anthology of critical writings about film. Now in its seventh edition, this landmark text continues to offer outstanding coverage of more than a century of thought and writing about the movies. Incorporating classic texts by pioneers in film theory--including Rudolf Arnheim, Siegfried Kracauer, and Andre Bazin--and cutting-edge essays by such contemporary scholars as David Bordwell, Tania Modleski, Thomas Schatz, and Richard Dyer, the book examines both historical and theoretical viewpoints on the subject. Building upon the wide range of selections and the extensive historical coverage that marked previous editions, this new compilation stretches from the earliest attempts to define the cinema to the most recent efforts to place film in the contexts of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and to explore issues of gender and race. Reorganized into eight sections--each comprising the major fields of critical controversy and analysis--this new edition features reformulated introductions and biographical headnotes that contextualize the readings, making the text more accessible than ever to students, film enthusiasts, and general readers alike. The seventh edition also integrates exciting new material on feminist theory, queer cinema, and global cinema, as well as a new section, "Digitization and Globalization," which engages important recent developments in technology and world cinema. A wide-ranging critical and historical survey, Film Theory and Criticism remains the leading text for undergraduate courses in film theory. It is also ideal for graduate courses in film theory and criticism. ABOUT THE EDITORS Leo Braudy is University Professor and Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Among other books, he is author of Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (OUP, 1991), The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (OUP, 1986), and most recently, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (2003). Marshall Cohen is University Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California. He is coeditor, with Roger Copeland, of What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism (OUP, 1983) and founding editor of Philosophy and Public Affairs.

Table of Contents

Preface

Film Language

Film Technique [On Editing]

Film Form Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram] The Dramaturgy of Film Form [The Dialectic Approach to Film Form]

What is Cinema? The Evolution of the Language of Cinema

Toward a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style

Film Language Some Points in the Semiotics of Cinema Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film

Semiotics and the Cinema

The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies

The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema

Against "The System of Suture"

The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach

Film and Reality

Theory of Film The Establishment of Physical Existence

What is Cinema? The Ontology of the Photographic Image The Myth of Total Cinema

Film As Art The Complete Film

The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema

Mystifying Movies Jean-Louis Baudry and "The Apparatus"

Modernizing Vision

Cinema Preface to the English Edition The Origin of the Crisis: Italian Neo-realism and the French New Wave Beyond the Movement-Image

The Film Medium: Image And Sound

Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures

Theory of Film The Establishment of Physical Existence

Theory of the Film The Close-up The Face of Man

Film As Art Film and Reality The Making of a Film

Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory The Specificity Thesis

Film/Cinema/Movie Projection

The World Viewed Photograph and Screen Audience, Actor, and Star Types: Cycles as Genres Ideas of Origin

Statement on Sound

The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space

Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound

Film Narrative and the Other Arts

What is Cinema? Theater and Cinema

The World in a Frame Acting: Stage vs. Screen

Dickens, Griffith, and Ourselves [Dickens, Griffith, Film Today]

Concepts in Film Theory Adaptation

Novel to Film

Narrative Discourse and the Narrator System

Film Music and Narrative Agency

Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'est

Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce

The Film Artist

Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962

Signs and Meaning in t

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