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Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Bill Nichols
Introduction to the fourth edition
Jill Nelmes
PART ONE: APPROACHES TO STUDYING CINEMA
1 Rediscovering Film Studies: Some fresh starting points
Patrick Phillips
Introduction: Film is
1. Non-linear film history
2. The image as document in time
3. Performance: image and intensity
4. Narrative, realism and the image
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
PART TWO: CINEMA AS INSTITUTION - Industries, technologies and audiences
2 The industrial contexts of film production
Searle Kochberg
Introduction
The origins of the American film industry (1900-1914)
Exhibition till 1907
Distribution till 1907
Production till 1907
The Motion Picture Patents Company and industry monopolies
Exhibition and audiences during the MPCC era (1908-1915)
Distribution in the MPCC era
Production during the MPCC era
Summary
The studio era of American film (1930 to 1949)
The origins of the studio-era oligopoly
Exhibition during the studio era
Distribution during the studio era
Production during the studio era
Case study 1: Warner Brothers
The contemporary film industry (1949 onwards)
1949 to the present – a brief view
Cinema exhibition today
Distribution today
Production today
Case study 2: a US ‘blockbuster’ production, Gladiator (2000)
Multi-media empires
Summary
Film audiences
From the late 1940s onwards
Recent and future trends
Building an audience
Case study 3: Sunn Classic Pictures and psychological testing
Case study 4: the youth market and building an audience for Trainspotting (1996)
Building an audience on the web for The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Summary
Conclusion to The Industrial Contexts of Film Production
Production
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
PART THREE: APPROACHES TO STUDYING FILM TEXTS
3 Film form and narrative
Suzanne Speidel
Introducing form and narrative
Conventions, Hollywood, art and avant-garde cinema
Story and plot
Hollywood and mainstream narratives
Art cinema narratives
Cinematic codes
Mise-en-scene
Setting
Props
Performance
Lighting
Cinematography
Special effects
Editing
Continuity editing
Sound
Case study 1: Classical conventions in Gladiator
Case study 2: Art and artifice in Wild Strawberries/Smultronstãllet (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Case study 3: Postmodernism and playing games in Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt (Tom Twyker, 1998)
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
4 Approaches to cinematic authorship
Paul Watson
Introduction
The three paradoxes of cinematic authorship
The paradox of collaboration: ‘Get me my agency!’
The paradox of theory: the immortal monster
The cultural paradox: authors, authors everywhere
What’s the use of authorship?
The emergence of the auteur
Auteurism as method
The problems of auteur theory
A biographical legend: the commerce of authorship
Towards a pragmatic conception of cinematic authorship
Conclusion
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
5 Genre theory and Hollywood cinema
Paul Watson
Introduction
Genre theory and Hollywood cinema
Genre theory and contemporary cinema
Defining genre(s)
Genre as taxonomy
The limits of generic taxonomies
Genre as economic strategy
Genre as cognition
From text to intertext: Genericity and Moulin Rouge
Rethinking genre: multiplicity and metaphor
Further reading
Further viewing
Resources centres
6 Stardom and Hollywood cinema
Paul Watson
Introduction: Three approaches to stardom
1. Star as commodity
2. Star as text
3. Star as ‘object of desire’
When is a star not a star?
Contemporary Hollywood and ‘modes of stardom’
‘The only thing I can’t play is a weak, ditzy woman’: analysing Jodie Foster
Conclusion
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
7 Spectator, audience and response
Patrick Phillips
Introduction
The film spectator
The film audience
Response studies
What we can learn from Early Cinema
The evolution of film form in Early Cinema
The evolution of film spectatorship in Early Cinema
Practical solutions, common sense or ideology?
The evolution of the film audience in Early Cinema
Case study 1: The responsetoThe Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)
The spectator of theory
Structuralist and post-structuralist theory
Cognitivism
Affect and excess
Response
Toward ‘thicker’ approaches to response
Case study 2: Pleasure and evalutation – Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
Part one: Picking up Mia and Jack Rabbit Slim’s
Part two: OD’ing
Imagining
Mixing approaches
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
PART FOUR: OTHER GENRE FORMS
8 The documentary form
Paul Ward
Introduction
What is documentary?
‘Proto-documentary’ – the case of early film actualities
Case study 1: the films of Mitchell and Kenyon
The shift to narrative structure in documentary
John Grierson and the British documentary movement
Post-war developments in observational documentary
Case study 2: Grey Gardens (Maysles Brothers, 1975)
The move to performative and reflexive documentary
Case study 3:Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Documentary, drama and performance
Case study 4:Twockers (Pawel Pawlikowski, 1998)
Summary
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
9 The language of animation
Paul Wells
Introduction
What is animation?
Early animation
Case study 1: Deconstructing the cartoon: Duck Amuk (Chuck Jones, 1953)
Case study 2: Animation as a self-reflexive language: Fast Film (Virgil Widrich, 1953)
Case study 3: Recalling and revising animation tradition: The Ren and Stimpy Show
Case study 4: Hayao Miyazaki
Case study 5: Norman McLaren
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
Part 5 Cinema, Identities and the Politics of Representation
10 Gender and film
Jill Nelmes
Introduction
Women and film
No job for a woman – a history of women in film
The feminist revolution
Feminist film theory and practice
Reassessing feminist film theory
Case study 1: Sally Potter, film-maker
Gender theory and theories of masculinity
Masculinity as unproblematic
Playing with gender
The male body
Male anxiety: masculinity in crisis
The new man?
Fatherhood and the family
Womb envy
Hurt, agony, pain – love it: the masochistic spectator
Case study 2:Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
Conclusion
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resources centres
11 Queer cinema
Chris Jones
Introduction: representation
Definitions and developments: changing language
Audiences
Film festivals: a historical overview
Gay sensibility
Camp aesthetics and cinema
Critical re-readings
Vito Russo
Richard Dyer
Andrea Weiss
Some queer films
Case study 1: Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien UK 1994)
Case study 2: Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberley Peirce US 1999)
A queer diversity
New techniques of expression
Gender, race and queer cinema
Queer and the mainstream – (mis)representation?
Queerifications
Essentialism – to label or not to label?
From image spotting to queer spectatorship: an overview
Conclusion: the way forward
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
12 Ethnicity, Race and Cinema - African American Film
Terri Francis
Introduction
Ethnicity, race and film
African American film history
African American migration narratives
‘The double truth rule’
Stereotypes
Racism
Whiteness
Genre
Viewing questions
Case study 1: From Zora Neale Hurston fieldwork footage (National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004)
Case study 2: The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, 1972)
Case study 3: Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000)
Conclusion
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
Part Six: Cinema, Nationhood, and National Identities
Studying National Cinema: Case Studies
13 British cinema
Lawrence Napper
Defining British cinema
From pioneering to protection
Fairground exhibition to picture palace
British scenes on British screens
Depression and war
Golden age to new wave
Decline and revival
Case study 1: Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003)
Case study 2: Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb, 2004)
Note
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
14 Indian Cinema
Lalitha Gopalan
Introduction
Production and reception conditions
Case study 1: Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2002)
Writing on Indian Cinema
Genre and form
Case study 2: Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)
Song and dance sequences
Love story
Case study 3: Bombay (Mani Ratnam, 1995)
Case study 4: Dil Chahta Hai/What the Heart Desires (Farhan Akhtar, 2001)
Case study 5: Guru Dutt
Interval
Gangster films
Case study 6: Satya (Ram Gopal Varma, 1998)
Censorship
The woman’s film
Case study 7: Bandit Queen (Shekhar Kapur, 1994) and Fire (Deepa Mehta, 1998)
Foundational fictions of the post-colonial nation
Case study 8: Hey! Ram (Kamal Haasan, 1999)
Case study 9: Lagaan/Tax (Ashutosh Gowrikar, 2001)
Conclusion
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
National Cinemas: Art, Politics and the Avant-Garde
15 Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s
Mark Joyce
Introduction: Why study the Soviet cinema?
Historical background
Pre-revolutionary Russian cinema
Soviet cinema and ideology: film as agent of change
Economics of the Soviet film industry
Form: montage
Other features of Soviet montage cinema
The key Soviet montage film-makers of the 1920s
Case study 1: Lev Kuleshov, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)
Case study 2: Sergei Eisenstein, Strike (1924); Battleship Potemkin (1925); October (1927); Old and New (1929)
Case study 3: Vsevolod Pudovkin, The Mother (1926); The End of St Petersburg (1927)
Case study 4: Alexander Dovzhenko, Arsenal (1929); Earth (1930)
Case study 5: Dziga Vertov, The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)
Case study 6: Esfir Shub, The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927)
Audience response
Theoretical debates: montage versus realism
Postcript to the 1920s
Notes
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
16 French New Wave
Chris Darke
Introduction
Postwar French film culture
Film criticism
Case study 1: A bout de souffle (Breathless, Jean -Luc Godard, 1960)
The production context of the New Wave
Case study 2: Les Quatre cents coups (The Four Hundred Blows, François Truffaut, 1959)
Characteristics of New Wave cinema
Case study 5: Jean-Luc Godard
Case study 6: Angès Varda
The legacy of the New Wave
Conclusion
Further reading
Further viewing
Resource centres
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
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