Movies and Methods: Vol. IIBill Nichols 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 |
745 | |
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