Movies and Methods: Vol. II

Front Cover
Bill Nichols
University of California Press, Sep 6, 1985 - Performing Arts - 764 pages
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.
 

Contents

The Stalin Myth in Soviet Cinema with an Introduction
29
Camera Perspective Depth
40
Technological and Aesthetic Influences on the Development
58
Sound and Color EDWARD BUSCOMBE
83
Notes on Columbia Pictures Corporation 19261941
92
Warner
109
Problems in the Writing of History
121
Economic and Signifying Practices
144
Mildred Pierce Reconsidered JOYCE NELSON
450
The Rhetoric of Stagecoach
458
SZ and The Rules of the Game JULIA LESAGE
476
Vent dEst PETER WOLLEN
500
Jaws Ideology and Film Theory STEPHEN HEATH
509
The Imaginary Discourse
517
Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus
531
CHRISTIAN METZ
543

Observations on the Family
165
Minnelli and Melodrama GEOFFREY NOWELLSMITH
190
Entertainment and Utopia RICHARD DYER
220
of the Seventies THOMAS WAUGH
233
The Voice of Documentary BILL NICHOLS
258
Beyond Observational Cinema DAVID MACDOUGALL
274
History and Theories
287
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema LAURA MULVEY
303
Some Theses
315
Death in Installments JAYNE LOADER
327
In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism B RUBY RICH
340
Michelle Citrons Daughter Rite
359
Gentlemen Consume Blondes MAUREEN TURIM
369
The Place of Woman in the Cinema of Raoul Walsh
379
Signification in the Cinema PAUL SANDRO
391
Warners Marked Woman
407
An American Dilemma BRIAN HENDERSON
429
A Note on StoryDiscourse GEOFFREY NOWELLSMITH
549
On the Naked Thighs of Miss Dietrich PETER BAXTER
557
The Articulation of Body and Space
565
The AvantGarde and Its Imaginary CONSTANCE PENLEY
576
Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema
602
The Neglected Tradition of Phenomenology in Film Theory
625
An Introduction
632
Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic ROBIN WOOD
649
A Brechtian Cinema? Towards a Politics of SelfReflexive Film
661
The PointofView Shot EDWARD BRANIGAN
672
Statistical Style Analysis of Motion Pictures BARRY SALT
691
The Space between Shots DAI VAUGHN
703
Dog
715
Further Readings
735
Index
745
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