Close viewings: an anthology of new film criticism

854 Pages·1990·7.33 MB·English

by  Peter Lehman

Close Viewings : An Anthology of New Film
title:
Criticism
author: Lehman, Peter.
publisher: University Press of Florida
isbn10 | asin: 0813009677
print isbn13: 9780813009674
ebook isbn13: 9780813019918
language: English
Motion picture plays--History and criticism,
subject
Motion pictures.
publication date: 1990
lcc: PN1995.C543 1990eb
ddc: 791.43/75
Motion picture plays--History and criticism,
subject:
Motion pictures.
Page ii
Page iii
Close Viewings
An Anthology of New Film Criticism
Edited by Peter Lehman
The Florida State University Press / Tallahassee
Page iv
An earlier version of chapter 3, "Visual Motifs in Rossellini's Voyage to Italy,"
appeared in Roberto Rossellini, by Peter Brunette (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987); copyright by Peter Brunette. An earlier version of
chapter 18, "Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Spectatorship," by
Judith Mayne, appeared in New German Critique 12 (1977). Both are
reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Close viewings: an anthology of new film criticism / edited by Peter
Lehman. p. cm.
ISBN 0-8130-0967-7 (alk. paper).ISBN 0-8130-0991-X (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Motion picture playsHistory and criticism. 2. Motion pictures.
I. Lehman, Peter.
PN1995.C543 1990 791.43'75dc20 89-29034
UNIVERSITY PRESSES OF FLORIDA is the central agency for scholarly
publishing of the State of Florida's university system, producing books
selected for publication by the faculty editorial committees of Florida's nine
public universities: Florida A&M University (Tallahassee), Florida Atlantic
University (Boca Raton), Florida International University (Miami), Florida
State University (Tallahassee), University of Central Florida (Orlando),
University of Florida (Gainesville), University of North Florida
(Jacksonville), University of South Florida (Tampa), University of West
Florida (Pensacola).
Orders for books published by all member presses should be addressed to
University Presses of Florida, 15 NW 15th Street, Gainesville, Florida 32603.
Copyright 1990 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida
Printed in the U.S.A. on acid-free paper
Page v
In Memory of Beverle Houston
Page vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book owes its inception to a suggestion made by Evelyn Ehrlich, and I
am grateful to her for it. Melanie Magisos made valuable comments about my
contributions and, as always, I am indebted to her insight and her personal
support. I would also like to thank Susan Hunt for preparing the index.
Beverle Houston was to be one of the contributors to this book. She is deeply
missed both as a treasured colleague and a contributor to this volume, and I
hope that her rare spirit of breadth, support, and enthusiasm for people of
varying interests can be felt throughout this anthology.
Page vii
CONTRIBUTORS
CHARLES AFFRON is a professor of French at New York University.
Among his publications are Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis, Cinema and
Sentiment, and Fellini's "8 1/2."
EDWARD BRANIGAN is associate professor and chair of the Film Studies
Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of
Point of View in the Cinema (1984) and is presently completing Narrative
Comprehension in Film.
MIKE BUDD teaches film, television, cultural theory and cultural studies in
the Department of Communication, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.
DOLORES BURDICK is an Emerita Professor of French at Oakland
University (Rochester, Michigan), where she taught French language and
literature, women's studies, and film. She has published poetry and
translations as well as scholarly articles on film and literature; she is presently
working on a novel.
NOËL CARROLL is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy
and the Department of Theatre Arts at Cornell University. He is the au-
Page viii
thor of Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory and Mystifying
Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory.
THOMAS CRIPPS, a professor of history at Morgan State University, has
written Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film and Black Film as
Genre; the script for the prizewinning film Black Shadows on a Silver Screen
(Post-Newsweek TV); many articles, among them winners of the Hammond
Prize (1962) and the Charles Thomson Prize (1982); and A Matter of Pride, a
35-show series (Group W, 1971).
ROBERT EBERWEIN is chair of the English Department at Oakland
University, where he teaches film theory, history and appreciation. His
publications include Film and the Dream Screen (1984), A Viewer's Guide to
Film Theory and Criticism (1979), and various articles. He is currently at
work on a book about adaptations, remakes, and sequels.
LUCY FISCHER is director of the Film Studies Program at the University of
Pittsburgh, where she is a professor of film and English. She is the author of
Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema (1989) and Jacques
Tati: A Guide to References and Resources (1983). She has published widely
on film in such journals as Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film
Studies, Film Quarterly, Wide Angle, Screen, Journal of Film and Video,
Millennium Film Journal, and American Film.
DONALD KIRIHARA is a lecturer in media arts at the University of
Arizona. His essays on film history and criticism have appeared in Journal of
Film and Video, Film Reader, and Wide Angle.
DOUGLAS GOMERY, author of The Hollywood Studio System, lives in
Washington, D.C., and teaches at the University of Maryland. His late friend
Cassie Moon provided invaluable help with the research for this essay.
MARY BETH HARALOVICH teaches film history in the Department of
Media Arts at the University of Arizona. Her recent publications include a
social historical analysis of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver in
Quarterly Review of Film and Video and "The Sexual Politics of The
Marriage of Maria Braun" in Wide Angle.
PETER LEHMAN is a professor of film in the Department of Media Arts at
the University of Arizona and coauthor (with William Luhr) of Returning to
the Scene: Blake Edwards, vol. 2; Blake Edwards; and Authorship and
Narrative in the Cinema: Issues in Contemporary Aesthetics and Criticism
(with William Luhr). He is the president of the Society for Cinema Studies
and was the founding editor of Wide Angle. His articles have appeared in
Journal of Film and Video, Genders, Wide Angle and Film Reader.
WILLIAM LUHR is a professor of English at Saint Peter's College in Jersey
City, New Jersey. His most recent book is Returning to the Scene: Blake Ed-
Page ix
wards, vol. 2 (1989, with Peter Lehman). He is also the author of Raymond
Chandler and Film (1982), Blake Edwards (1981, with Peter Lehman), and
Authorship and Narrative in the Cinema: Issues in Contemporary Aesthetics
and Criticism (1977, with Peter Lehman), and the editor of World Cinema
Since 1945 (1987). He is currently working on a biography of Blake Edwards.
JUDITH MAYNE teaches in the Department of French and Italian and the
Center for Women's Studies at Ohio State University. She is the author of
Private Novels, Public Films (1988), Kino and the Woman Question:
Feminism and Soviet Silent Film (1989), and The Woman at the Keyhole
(forthcoming).
PATRICIA MELLENCAMP is an associate professor in the Department of
Art History at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She has published
many essays on film and video in Screen, Afterimage, and Discourse. She is
the author of Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video, and Feminism and the
editor of Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism.
RUSSELL MERRITT has taught at the University of California-Berkeley and
the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His articles have appeared in Film,
Comment, Wide Angle, and Cinema Journal.
ROBERT T. SELF is a professor of English and the director of Freshman
English at Northern Illinois University. He has published research on
American literature and film in American Quarterly, Film Criticism,
Literature/Film Quarterly, Wide Angle, and Cinema Journal. He is the author
of Barrett Wendell and the editor of Literature, Society, and Politics:
Collected Essays of Barrett Wendell. His current project focuses on the
narrative dimensions of the films of Robert Altman.
DIANE WALDMAN is an associate professor in the Department of Mass
Communications at the University of Denver, where she also teaches in the
Women's Studies Program. She has published numerous articles on film and
social history and feminist analysis in such journals as New German Critique,
Camera Obscura, Wide Angle, and Cinema Journal. She has also written on
the popularization of psychoanalysis in Hollywood films of the 1940s.
JANET WALKER is a visiting assistant professor of film studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published in such journals as