Film theory an introduction through the senses pdf

What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? This is the key question for film theory, and one that Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener put at the centre of their insightful and engaging book, now revised from its popular first edition. Every kind of cinema (and every film theory) first imagines an ideal spectator, and then maps certain dynamic interactions between the screen and the spectator’s mind, body, and senses. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ rela- tionships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from its beginnings to the present – from neorealist and modernist theories to psycho- analytic, ‘apparatus,’ phenomenological, and cognitivist theories, and including recent cross-overs with philosophy and neurology.

This new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout, incorporating discussion of contemporary films like Her and Gravity and including a greatly expanded final chapter, which brings film theory fully into the digital age.

Thomas Elsaesser is Professor Emeritus of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam and since 2012 Visiting Professor at Columbia Univer- sity. His recent books include: Weimar Cinema and After (Routledge, 2000); Metropolis (British Film Institute, 2000); Studying Contemporary American Film (Hodder, 2002, with Warren Buckland); European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005); The Persistence of Hollywood (Routledge, 2012); and German Cinema: Terror and Trauma (Routledge, 2013).

Malte Hagener is Professor of Media Studies at Marburg University. He has written Moving Forward, Looking Back: The European Avant-garde and the Invention of Film Culture, 1919–1939 (Amsterdam University Press, 2008) and edited many volumes, including The Emergence of Film Culture (Berghahn, 2014).

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An Introduction Through the Senses

2nd Edition

Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener

Film Theory

Second edition published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

The right of Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Routledge 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elsaesser, Thomas, 1943– Film theory : an introduction through the senses / Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener. — Second edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion pictures. I. Hagener, Malte, 1971– II. Title. PN1994.E53 2015 791.43—dc23 2014037890

ISBN: 978-1-138-82429-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-82430-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-74076-8 (ebk)

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Film Theory, Cinema, the Body, and the Senses 1

1 Cinema as Window and Frame 14 REAR WINDOW – Constructivism – Realism – Open and Closed Film Forms (Leo Braudy) – Classical Cinema – Central Perspective – Rudolf Arnheim – Sergei Eisenstein – André Bazin – David Bordwell – Cinema as Shop Window and Display

2 Cinema as Door – Screen and Threshold 39 THE SEARCHERS – Entry into the Film – Etymology of ‘Screen’ – Thresholds of the Cinema – Beginnings: Credits and Credit Sequences – Neoformalism (Bordwell/ Thompson) – Poststructuralism (Thierry Kuntzel) – Mikhail Bakhtin – Door and Screen as Filmic Motifs in Buster Keaton and Woody Allen

3 Cinema as Mirror – Face and Close-Up 63 PERSONA – Béla Balázs – Close-Up and Face – Face as Mirror of the Unconscious – Christian Metz – Jean-Louis Baudry – Apparatus Theory – Early Cinema and the Close-Up (Tom Gunning) – Refl exive Doubling in Modern (Art) Cinema – Mirror Neurons – Paradoxes of the Mirror

4 Cinema as Eye – Look and Gaze 94 BLADE RUNNER – Active and Passive Eye – The Mobile Eye of Early Cinema – Dziga Vertov – Apparatus-Theory – Suture – Continuity Editing – Laura Mulvey – Feminist Film Theories – THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS – Historicity of Modes of Perception – Regimes of the Gaze – The ‘Big Other’ ( Jacques Lacan) – Slavoj Žižek – Panoptic Gaze (Michel Foucault) – Niklas Luhmann and Self-Monitoring