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Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film


Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film

Paperback by Gibbs, John; Pye, Douglas

Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film

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£13.59

ISBN:
9780719065255
Publication Date:
1 Mar 2005
Language:
English
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Pages:
264 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 16 - 18 May 2024
Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film

Description

Approaches to the detailed analysis of film and related questions about interpretations and value are once again being widely debated in film studies. Style and meaning is the first edited collection for many years to focus on these matters. The essays - which include contributions by established film scholars (such as George M. Wilson, V. F. Perkins and Laura Mulvey) and by younger writers in the field - centre on methods of close analysis and ground their discussion in the detail of individual films. With a common focus on the choices made by filmmakers, the writers explores different aspects of the relationship between textual detail and broader conceptual frameworks. Some chapters examine individual aspects of filmmaking - the long take, cinematography, space and point of view, unreliable narration. Others take up different kinds of questions which are equally crucial to textual analysis and interpretation, including: meaning and value; emotional response; the concept of 'the fictional world'; new technologies and film analysis. The selection of films has been made to reflect not only those areas of film history which traditionally been explored through mise-en-scène criticism, but also areas such as the avant-garde and television drama which have not tended to receives such detailed investigation. In these ways the book conducts a series of dialogues with issues in film study which are specifically provoked by close analysis. Style and meaning is an important new initiative in the varied literature of film studies. its highly readable collection of analyses and variety of approaches will prove popular on undergraduate courses while providing an invaluable resource for graduate students and teachers of film and media.

Contents

Introduction John Gibbs and Douglas Pye 1 Where is the world? The horizon of events in movie fiction V. F. Perkins 2 From detail to meaning: Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) and cinematic articulation Jonathan Bignell 3 Narrative and visual pleasures in the The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934) George M. Wilson 4 The Dandy and the Magdalen: interpreting the long take in Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949) 5 Character interiority: space, point of view and performance in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) Neill Potts 6 Narration, point of view and patterns in the soundtrack of Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948) Steve Neale 7 Revisiting Preminger: Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and close reading John Gibbs and John Pye 8 Meaning and value in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) 9 A Hollyswooed art firlm: Liebestraum (Mike Figgis, 1991) Michael Walker 10 Swimming and sinking: form and meaning in an avant-garde film Jim Hillier 11 'Knowings one's place': frame-breaking, embarrassment and irony in La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol, 1995) Deborah Thomas 12 'Television aesthetics' and close analysis: style, mood and engagement in Perfect Strangers (Stephen Poliakoff, 2001) Sarah Cardwell 13 How cinematography creates meaning in Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, 1997) Cathy Grennhalgh 14 Motes on teaching film style Andrew Klevan 15 Repetition and return: textual analysis and Douglas Sirk in the twenty-first century Laura Mulvey

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