Film Theory and Criticism Introductory Readings

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 eighth 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 and cutting-edge essays by contemporary scholars, the text 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 ten 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.

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.

Leo Braudy is University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and Professor of English, Art History, and History at the University of Southern California. Among other books, he is author of Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, and most recently, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity.

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, and founding editor of Philosophy and Public Affairs.

Preface

I. FILM LANGUAGE

VSEVOLOD PUDOVKIN From Film Technique
[On Editing]

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

ANDRÉ BAZIN From What is Cinema?
The Evolution of the Language of Cinema

CHRISTIAN METZ From Film Language
Some Points in the Semiotics of Cinema

GILBERT HARMAN Semiotics and the Cinema: Metz and Wollen

STEPHEN PRINCE The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies

DANIEL DAYAN The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema

WILLIAM ROTHMAN Against "The System of Suture"


II. FILM AND REALITY

SIEGFRIED KRACAUER From Theory of Film
Basic Concepts

ANDRÉ BAZIN From What is Cinema?
The Ontology of the Photographic Image
The Myth of Total Cinema
De Sica: Metteur-en-scene

RUDOLF ARNHEIM From Film As Art
The Complete Film

JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema

NOEL CARROLL From Mystifying Movies
Jean-Louis Baudry and "The Apparatus"


III. THE FILM MEDIUM: IMAGE

SIEGFRIED KRACAUER From Theory of Film
The Establishment of Physical Existence

BÉLA BALÁSZ From Theory of the Film
The Close-up
The Face of Man

RUDOLF ARNHEIM From Film as Art
Film and Reality
The Making of a Film

JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus

NOEL CARROLL Defining the Moving Image

D. N. RODOWICK Elegy for Film


IV. THE FILM MEDIUM: SOUND

SERGEI EISENSTEIN, VSEVELOD PUDOVKIN, and GRIGORI ALEXANDROV Statement on Sound

CHRISTIAN METZ Aural Objects

MARY ANN DOANE The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space

MICHEL CHION From The Voice in Cinema

JOHN BELTON Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound

RICK ALTMAN From Sound Theory / Sound Practice


V. FILM NARRATIVE AND THE OTHER ARTS

ANDRÉ BAZIN From What is Cinema?
Theater and Cinema

LEO BRAUDY From The World in a Frame
Acting: Stage vs. Screen

DUDLEY ANDREW From Concepts in Film Theory
Adaptation

TOM GUNNING From D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film
Narrative Discourse and the Narrator System

JERROLD LEVINSON Film Music and Narrative Agency

PETER WOLLEN Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'est

CARL PLANTINGA Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film Criticism


VI. THE FILM ARTIST

ANDREW SARRIS Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962

PETER WOLLEN From Signs and Meaning in the Cinema
The Auteur Theory [Howard Hawks and John Ford]

ROLAND BARTHES The Face of Garbo

MOLLY HASKELL From Reverence to Rape
Female Stars of the 1940s

GILBERTO PEREZ From The Material Ghost
[On Keaton and Chaplin]

RICHARD DYER From Stars

THOMAS SCHATZ From The Genius of the System
The Whole Equation of Pictures

JEROME CHRISTENSEN From America's Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures


VII. FILM GENRES

LEO BRAUDY From The World in a Frame
Genre: The Conventions of Connection

RICK ALTMAN From Film/Genre
A Semantic/Syntactic/Pragmatic Approach to Genre
Conclusion: A Semantic/Syntactic/Pragmatic Approach to Genre

PAUL SCHRADER Notes on Film Noir

ROBIN WOOD Ideology, Genre, Auteur

LINDA WILLIAMS Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess

CAROL CLOVER From Men, Women, and Chainsaws

CYNTHIA A. FREELAND Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films

DAVID BORDWELL The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice


VIII. FILM: SPECTATOR AND AUDIENCE

JEAN COMOLLI and JEAN NARBONI Cinema/Ideology/Criticism

CHRISTIAN METZ From The Imaginary Signifier
Identification, Mirror
The Passion for Perceiving
Disavowal, Fetishism

LAURA MULVEY Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

TANIA MODLESKI From The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory
The Master's Dollhouse: Rear Window

TOM GUNNING An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator

RICHARD DYER From White
Lighting for Whiteness

MANTHIA DIAWARA Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance

bell hooks The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators

LEILANI NISHIME The Mulatto Cyborg: Imaging a Multiracial Future


IX. DIGITIZATION

LEV MANOVICH From The Language of New Media
Synthetic Realism and Its Discontents
The Synthetic Image and Its Subject
Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image

PHILIP ROSEN From Change Mummified

JOHN BELTON The World in the Palm of Your Hand: Agnes Varda, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and the Digital Documentary

KRISTEN WHISSEL The Digital Multitude

KRISTEN DALY Cinema 3.0: The Interactive-Image

HENRY JENKINS Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture


X. GLOBALIZATION

DUDLEY ANDREW Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema

ELLA SHOHAT and ROBERT STAM From Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media
Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle Over Representation

STEPHEN CROFTS Reconceptualizing National Cinema(s)

MITSUHIRO YOSHIMOTO The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order

REY CHOW Film and Cultural Identity

YINGJIN ZHANG Chinese Cinema and Transnational Film Studies

WIMAL DISSANAYAKE Issues in World Cinema