Passionate Views

by Plantinga, Carl R.; Smith, Greg M.

• ISBN13: 9780801860119
• ISBN10: 0801860113
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-03-22
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today. In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of film studies, philosophy, and psychology explore the emotional appeal of the cinema. Employing a novel cognitive perspective, the volume investigates the relationship between genre and emotion; explores how film narrative, music, and cinematic techniques such as the close-up are used to elicit emotion; and examines the spectator's identification with and response to film characters. An impressive range of films and topics is brought together by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, including: the success of Stella Dallas and An Affair to Remember as tearjerkers; the power of Night of the Living Dead to inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked in The Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise; the emotional basis of film comedy as seen in When Harry Met Sally; the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Local Hero to arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion in Once Upon a Time in the West and E.T.; the emotive use of music in The Elephant Man and A Clockwork Orange; Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution in Casablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Day and The Crying Game; portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs, Flaming Creatures, and Shivers; and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces in Yankee Doodle Dandy and Blade Runner. Passionate Views offers a new approach to our understanding of film and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the emotional power of motion pictures and their relationship to the central concerns of our lives, as well as by the techniques filmmakers use to move an audience.

Author Biography

Carl Plantinga is an associate professor of film and director of the Screenwriting and Film Studies Program at Hollins College. Greg M. Smith is an assistant professor of communication studies at Carlow College.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(20)
Carl Plantinga
Greg M. Smith
Kind of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Film, Emotion, and Genre	21	(27)
Noel Carroll
Sentiment in Film Viewing	48	(17)
S.H.Tan
Nico H.Frijda
The Sublime in Cinema	65	(19)
Cynthia A. Freeland
The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy	84	(19)
Dirk Eitzen
Film Technique, Film Narrative, and Emotion
Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure	103	(24)
Greg M. Smith
Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film	127	(19)
Torben Grodal
Movie Music as Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score	146	(22)
Jeff Smith
Time and Timing	168	(15)
Susan L. Feagin
DESIRE, IDENTIFICATION, AND EMPATHY
Narrative Desire	183	(17)
Gregory Currie
Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film	200	(17)
Berys Gaut
Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances	217	(22)
Murray Smith
The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film	239	(18)
Carl Plantinga
Notes	257	(32)
Select Bibliography	289	(6)
Contributors	295	(2)
Index	297