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"Signs and Meaning in the Cinema", Peter Wollen

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Peter Wollen (1938-2019) was a theorist, screenwriter (he co-wrote Antonioni’s The Passenger ), film critic (in addition to Screen magazine, where he developed his film theories, he wrote for the New Left Review under the pseudonym Lee Russell) and filmmaker. His most famous films were co-signed with his wife Laura Mulvey. His most remembered work is the seminal book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema , which discussed, in a captivating and accessible way, the semiotic and structuralist approach in the cinematographic context.  The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the theoretical and filmic work of Eisenstein. The second, about the auteur theory, investigates the recurrence of themes and images in some directors' careers, namely Hawks and Ford. And the third one develops how a film should be seen as a system of signs and codes, a bearer of a personal language to which the viewer has to adapt himself, referencing also the aesthetic innovations of Jean-Luc Godar