Film as Art: 50th Anniversary Printing“More than half a century since its initial publication, this deceptively compact book remains among the most incisive analyses of the formal and perceptual dynamics of cinema. No one who cares about film can afford to remain ignorant of its insights and wisdom. As digital technology fundamentally alters motion pictures, the lessons of Film as Art commend themselves as excellent insurance against reinventing the wheel in the new media landscape and hailing it as progress.”—Edward Dimendberg author of Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity “After more than eight decades, Rudolph Arnheim's small book of film theory remains one of the essential works in defining film art, understanding film less as reproducing the world than as opening up new possibilities for formal play and unexpected imagery. Anyone serious about film, whether scholar, filmmaker or simply a lover of cinema, must take Arnheim seriously.”—Tom Gunning, author of The Films of Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film “An aesthetic theory based on the formal ‘limitations’ of the medium, Arnheim’s Film as Art always provokes students in an age of few limits and less formality, and they argue and engage this classic text with unparalleled passion. Written in the wake of sound’s transformation of the cinema, Arnheim’s essays are not only central to understanding a major historical moment in theoretical debates about what constitutes the ‘essence’ of film, but also are a must read for anyone seeking a lucid, detailed, and rigorous argument about how works of art emerge from expressive constraint as much as expressive freedom.”—Vivian Sobchack, author of Carnal Thoughts |
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abstract achieved actor actual appear audience body Buster Keaton camera angle Carl Dreyer Chaplin Charlie Chaplin chronophotography close-up color film complete concrete connection contrast dance device dialogue director distance example expression eyes face facial fact feeling figure film art film artist film director film picture front gestures girl give Greta Garbo Henny Porten human illusion immobile impression instance invention light long shot looking Max Wertheimer means mechanical medium ment montage motion picture movement moving nature negative object painting pantomime particular perspective phases photograph play possible principle produce projection Pudovkin reality recording reproduced result scene screen seen sense sequence shape shown silent film similar simply sound film space spatial spectator speech stage stereoscopic suddenly surface symbolic taken talking film technique television theater theme things three-dimensional tion visible visual action whole Woman of Paris worm's-eye view