"Film Theory & Criticism", Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen

Cinema is an art form with more than 120 years. And yet, it seems that today its appreciation has arrived to a cul-de-sac. Looking at American criticism, we see that the evaluation of a film turns out to be essentially focused on its narrative merits, that is, on the screenplay, rather in the mise en scène, editing and all the audiovisual merits that make cinema a such unique art form. On the other hand, in Europe and other parts, it seems that the theory that is more frequently discussed is the auteur theory. As such, a book like Film Theory and Criticism is each time more and more relevant to remind us of how complex a film can be, and how many different analyses it can arouse in very different levels. This book is an anthology of the most important cinematographic studies and theories created about cinema, throughout all these decades. From Eisenstein's montage theories, to studies of digital technology and use of the vertical axis on blockbusters, with a look on Christian Metz's semiotics or Bazin’s studies on long takes and depth of field, among many others, each essay here collected contributes to a reflection of the cinema and its psychological, sociological and philosophical dimensions, besides addressing important topics such as gender and race.

Edited by film historians and critics Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, the first edition was published in 1974 and it quickly became an indispensable reference book on any cinephile shelf, as it is the most cited and widely used anthology of critical writings about film. The edition available here is the seventh and was published in 2009. Each essay is accompanied by an introduction written by its editors that help to contextualize the historical period in which each essay appeared, highlighting its relevance and revolutionary aspects, as well as synthesizing its key ideas.

Excerpts:

"The combination of two ‘representable’ objects achieves the representation of something that cannot be graphically represented.

For example: the representation of water and of an eye signifies ‘to weep’,

the representation of an ear next to a drawing of a door means ‘to listen’,

a dog and a mouth mean ‘to bark’

a mouth and a baby mean to ‘scream’

a mouth and a bird mean ‘to sing’

a knife and a heart mean ‘sorrow’, and so on

But—this is montage!!"

Sergei Eisentein, Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram]

"A woman performs within the narrative, the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude. For a moment the sexual impact of the performing woman takes the film into a no-man’s land outside its own time and space. Thus Marilyn Monroe’s first appearance in The River of No Return and Lauren Bacall’s songs in To Have or Have Not. Similarly, conventional close-ups of legs (Dietrich, for instance) or a face (Garbo) integrate into the narrative a different mode of eroticism. (...) As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence." Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

"Precisely because verticality automatically implies the intersection of two opposed forces—gravity and the force required to overcome it— it is an ideal technique for visualizing power. Verticality thereby facilitates a rather literal naturalization of culture in which the operation and effects of (social, economic, military) power are mapped onto the laws of space and time. Hence, in recent blockbuster films, vertically oriented bodies and objects imply a relation not just to the laws of physics but also to the spaces and times that define a fictional world’s prevailing order. Vertical movement thereby gives dynamic, hyperkinetic expression to power and the individual’s relation to it—defiant, transcendent, or subordinate." Kristen Whissel, Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special Effects

Link to the complete book in PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kGwGUcLE-7zzOX74RFGpJJd7z0Rd9TUW/view?usp=sharing