Style and Meaning Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film

by Gibbs, John; Pye, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780719065255
• ISBN10: 0719065259
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-01
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

With a common focus on the decisions made by filmmakers, the essays in this collection explore different aspects of the relationship between textual detail and broader conceptual frameworks. These texts reflect not only those areas of film history which have traditionally been explored through mise-en-scegrave;ne criticism, but also areas such as the avant-garde and television drama which have not tended to receive such detailed investigation. In these ways, the book conducts a series of dialogues with issues in film study which are specifically provoked by close analysis.

Author Biography

John Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of the Arts, London.

Douglas Pye is Senior Lecturer in Film in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
List of contributors	xi
Acknowledgements	xiv
Introduction
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye	1	(15)
1 Where is the world? The horizon of events in movie fiction
V.F. Perkins	16	(26)
2 From detail to meaning: Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) and cinematic articulation
Jonathan Bignell	42	(11)
3 Narrative and visual pleasures in The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
George M. Wilson	53	(15)
4 The Dandy and the Magdalen: interpreting the long take in Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949)
Ed Gallafent	68	(17)
5 Character interiority: space, point of view and performance in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)
Neill Potts	85	(13)
6 Narration, point of view and patterns in the soundtrack of Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
Steve Neale	98	(10)
7 Revisiting Preminger: Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and close reading
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye	108	(19)
8 Meaning and value in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927)
Corin Willis	127	(14)
9 A Hollywood art film: Liebestraum (Mike Figgis, 1991)
Michael Walker	141	(14)
10 Swimming and sinking: form and meaning in an avant-garde film
Jim Hillier	155	(12)
11 'Knowing one's place': frame-breaking, embarrassment and irony in La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol, 1995)
Deborah Thomas	167	(12)
12 'Television aesthetics' and close analysis: style, mood and engagement in Perfect Strangers (Stephen Poliakoff, 2001)
Sarah Cardwell	179	(16)
13 How cinematography creates meaning in Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Cathy Greenhalgh	195	(19)
14 Notes on teaching film style
Andrew Klevan	214	(14)
15 Repetition and return: textual analysis and Douglas Sirk in the twenty-first century
Laura Mulvey	228	(16)
Index	244