Movies and Methods, Volume 2 / Edition 1

by Bill Nichols

Overview

The original Movies and Methods volume (1976) captured the dynamic evolution of film theory and criticism into an important new discipline, incorporating methods from structuralism, semiotics, and feminist thought. Now there is again ferment in the field. Movies and Methods, Volume II, captures the developments that have given history and genre studies imaginative new models and indicates how feminist, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film have achieved fresh, valuable insights.

In his thoughtful introduction, Nichols provides a context for the paradoxes that confront film studies today. He shows how shared methods and approaches continue to stimulate much of the best writing about film, points to common problems most critics and theorists have tried to resolve, and describes the internal contraditions that have restricted the usefulness of post-structuralism. Mini-introductions place each essay in a larger context and suggest its linkages with other essays in the volume.

A great variety of approaches and methods characterize film writing today, and the final part conveys their diversity—from statistical style analysis to phenomenology and from gay criticisms to neoformalism. This concluding part also shows how the rigorous use of a broad range of approaches has helped remove post-structuralist criticism from its position of dominance through most of the seventies and early eighties.

The writings collected in this volume exhibit not only a strong sense of personal engagement but als a persistent awareness of the social importance of the cinema in our culture. Movies and Methods, Volume II, will prove as invaluable to the serious student of cinema as its predecessor; it will be an essential reference work for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520054097
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/13/1985
Series:	Movies and Methods Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	764
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.80(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction BILL NICHOLS

Part 1 HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The Stalin Myth in Soviet Cinema (with an Introduction by
Dudley Andrew) ANDRE BAZIN
Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of
Field JEAN-LOUIS COMOLLI
Technological and Aesthetic Influences on the Development of
Deep-Focus Cinematography in the United States
PATRICK OGLE
Sound and Color EDWARD BUSCOMBE
Notes on Columbia Pictures Corporation 1926-1941
EDWARD BUSCOMBE
Writing the History ofthe American Film Industry: Warner
Brothers and Sound DOUGLAS GOMERY
Color and Cinema: Problems in the Writing of History
EDWARD BRANIGAN
Mass-Produced Photoplays: Economic and Signifying Practices
in the First Years of Hollywood JANET STAIGER

Part 2 GENRE CRITICISM
Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family
Melodrama THOMAS ELSAESSER
Minnelli and Melodrama GEOFFREY NOWELL-SMITH
An Introduction to the American Horror Film ROBIN WOOD
Entertainment and Utopia RICHARD DYER
Beyond Verite: Emile de Antonio and the New Documentary
of the Seventies THOMAS WAUGH
The Voice of Documentary BILL NICHOLS
Beyond Observational Cinema DAVID MACDOUGALL
The Avant-Garde: History and Theories
CONSTANCE PENLEY AND JANET BERGSTROM

Part 3 FEMINIST CRITICISM
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema LAURA MULVEY
Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses
CLAIREJOHNSTON
Jeanne Dielman: Death in Installments JAYNE LOADER
In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism B. RUBY RICH
The Right of Re-Vision: Michelle Citron's Daughter Rite
LINDA WILLIAMS AND B. RUBY RICH
Gentlemen Consume Blondes MAUREEN TURIM
The Place of Woman in the Cinema of Raoul Walsh
PAM COOK AND CLAIRE JOHNSTON

Part 4 STRUCTURALIST SEMIOTICS
Signification in the Cinema PAULSANDRO
The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner's Marked Woman
CHARLES ECKERT
The Searchers: An American Dilemma BRIAN HENDERSON
Mildred Pierce Reconsidered JOYCE NELSON
The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach
NICK BROWNE
S/Z and The Rules of the Game JULIA LESAGE
Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d' Est PETER WOLLEN
Jaws, Ideology, and Film Theory STEPHEN HEATH

Part 5 PSYCHOANALYTIC SEMIOTICS
Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Discourse
CHARLES F. ALTMAN
Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus
JEAN-LOUIS BAUDRY
Story/Discourse: Notes on Two Kinds of Voyeurism
CHRISTIAN METZ
A Note on Story/Discourse GEOFFREY NOWELL-SMITH
On the Naked Thighs of Miss Dietrich PETER BAXTER
The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space
MARY ANN DOANE
The Avant-Garde and Its Imaginary CONSTANCE PENLEY
Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema
GAYLYN STUDLAR

Part 6 COUNTERCURRENTS
The Neglected Tradition of Phenomenology in Film Theory
DUDLEY ANDREW
Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction
ROBERT STAMAND LOUISE SPENCE
Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic ROBIN WOOD
A Brechtian Cinema? Towards a Politics of Self-Reflexive Film
DANA POLAN
The Point-of-View Shot EDWARD BRANIGAN
Statistical Style Analysis of Motion Pictures BARRY SALT
The Space between Shots DAI VAUGHN
Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day
Afternoon as a Political Film FREDRIC JAMESON

Further Readings
Index