Film Theory and Criticism

Introductory Readings

EIGHTH EDITION

EDITED BY

Leo Braudy University of Southern California

Marshall Cohen University of Southern California

New York Oxford

Oxford University Press

Contents

Preface xv

1. Film Language 1

Vsevolod Pudovkin From Film Technique 6 [On Editing] 6

Sergei Eisenstein From Film Form 12 Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram] 12

The Dramaturgy of Film Form [The Dialectical Approach to Film Form] 23

Andre Bazin From What ls Cinema? 41 The Evolution ofthe Language ofCinema 41

Christian Metz From Film Language 54 Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema 54

Gilbert Harman Semiotics and the Cinema: Metz and Wollen

Stephen Prince The Discourse of Pictures: lconicity and Film Studies 70

Daniel Dayan The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema 89

William Rothman Against "The System of the Suture" 102

61

ix

x CONTENTS

II. Film and Reality 109

Siegfried Kracauer From Theory of Film 113 Basic Concepts 113

Andre Bazin From What ls Cinema? 126 The Ontology ofthe Photographie Image 126

The Myth ofTotal Cinema 130

De Sica: Metteur-Eu-Scene 134

Rudolf Arnheim From Film as Art 144 The Complete Film 144

Jean-Louis Baudry The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema 148

Noäl Carroll Fröm Mystifying Movies 166 Jean-Louis Baudry and "The Apparatus" 166

III. The Film Medium: Image 183

Siegfried Kracauer From Theory of Film 187 The Establishment of Physical Existence 187

Bela Balazs From Theory of the Film 198 The Close-up 198

The Face of Man 200

Rudolf Arnheim From Film as Art 207 Film and Reality 207

The Making of a Film 211

Jean-Louis Baudry ldeologicai Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus 217

Noäl Catroll From Theorizing the Moving Image 228 Defining the Moving Image 228

D. N. Rodowick From The Virtual Life of Film 248 An Elegy for Film 248

CONTENTS

IV. The Film Medium: Sound 251

Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov Statement on Sound 256

Christian Metz Aural Objects 259

Michel Chion From The Voice in Cinema 263

Mary Ann Doane The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space 275

John Beiton Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound 288

Rick Altman From Sound Theory /Sound Practice 297 Four and a Half Film Fallacies 297

V. Film Narrative and the Other Arts 307

Andre Bazin From What ls Cinema? 311 Theater and Cinema 311

Leo Braudy From The World in a Frame 323 Acting: Stage vs. Screen 323

Dudley Andrew From Concepts in Film Theory 330 Adaptation 330

Tom Gunning From D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film 340 Narrative Discourse and the Narrator System 340

Jerrold Levinson Film Music and Narrative Agency 353

Peter Wollen Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'est 365

Carl Plantinga Notes on Spectator Emotion and ldeological Film Criticism 374

xi

xii CONTENTS

VI. The Film Artist 395

Andrew Sarris Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962 400

Peter Wollen From Signs and Meaning in the Cinema 404 The Auteur Theory [Howard Hawks and John Ford] 404

Roland Barthes The Face of Garbo 421

Molly Haskell From From Reverence to Rape 424 Female Stars ofthe 1940s 424

Gilberto Perez ~rom The Material Ghost 438 (On Keaton and Chaplin) 438

Richard Dyer From Stars 445

Thomas Schatz From The Genius of the System 458 "The Whole Equation of Pictures" 458

Jerome Christensen From America's Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures 463

VII. Film Genres 473

Leo Braudy From The Wor/d in a Frame 477 Genre: The Conventions of Connection 477

Rick Altman From Film/Genre 495 A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre 495

Conclusion: A Semantic/Syntactic/Pragmatic Approach to Genre 506

Paul Schrader Notes on Film Noir 515

Robin Wood ldeology, Genre, Auteur 526

Linda Williams Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess 537

Carol Clover From Men, Women, and Chainsaws 552

CONTENTS

Cynthia A. Freeland Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films 563

David Bordwell The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice 580

VIII. Spectator and Audience 589

Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni Cinema/ldeology/Criticism 594

Christian Metz From The lmaginary Signifier 602 Identification, Mirror 602

The Passion for Perceiving 610

Disavowal, Fetishism 614

Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema 620

xiii

Tania Modleski From The Women Who Knew Tao Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory 632 The Master's Dollhouse: Rear Window 632

Tom Gunning An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In) Credulous Spectator 645

Richard Dyer From White 660 Lighting for Whiteness 660

Manthia Diawara Black Spectatorship: Problems of ldentification and Resistance 672

bell hooks The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators 681

Leilani Nishime The Mulatto Cyborg: lmagining a Multiracial Future 694

IX. Digitization 711

Lev Manovich From The Language of New Media 717 Synthetic Realism and Its Discontents 717

The Synthetic Image and Its Subject 722

Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image 727

•

xiv CONTENTS

Philip Rosen From Change Mummified 734

John Beiton The World in the Palm of Your Hand: Agnes Varda, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and the Digital Documentary 744

Kristen Whissel The Digital Multitude 757

Kristen Daly Cinema 3.0: The lnteractive-lmage 777

Henry Jenkins Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture 795

X. Globalization 809

Dudley Andrew Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema 813

Ella Shohat and Robert Stam From Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media 840 Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle Over Representation 840

Stephen Crofts Reconceptualizing National Cinema(s) 860

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order 872

Rey Chow Film and Cultural ldentity 885

Yingjin Zhang Chinese Cinema and Transnational Film Studies 893

Wimal Dissanayake lssues in World Cinema 905

Index 915