Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies

582 Pages·1996·50.91 MB·english

by  David Bordwell

POST-THEORY
Reconstructing
Film Studies
WISCONSIN
studies in fjlm
General Editors
David Bordwell
Donald Crafton
Vance Kepley, Jr.
Kristin Thompson, Supervising Editor
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies
Edited by David Bordwell and Noel Carroll
Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation
in the United States
Douglas Comery
Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film
Avant-Garde, 1919-1945
Edited by Jan-Christopher Horak
The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the
Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942
Lea Jacobs
Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film
Kathryn Kalinak
Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s
Donald Kirihara
POST-THEORY
Reconstructing
Film Studies
Edited by
DAVID BORDWELL
and
NOEL CARROLL
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
www.wisc.edu\wisconsinpress
Copyright © 1996
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any
means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without written
permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of
brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.
4 6 8 7 5
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Post-theory: reconstructing film srudies/
edited by David Bordwell and Noel Carroll.
582 pp. cm. - (Wisconsinsrudies in film)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-299-14940-4 (cloth: alk. paper). - ISBN 0-299-14944-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures. I. Bordwell, David. II. Carroll, Noel (Noel E.) III. Series.
PN1994.P6565 1996
791.43-dc20 95-37052
ISBN-13: 978-0-299-14944-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
CONTENTS
Contributors lX
Introduction Xlll
PART ONE. STATE OF THE ART
l. Contemporary Film Studies and the
Vicissitudes of Grand Theory 3
David Bordwell
2. Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment 37
Noi:1 Carroll
PART TWO. FILM THEORY AND AESTHETICS 69
3. Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem
of the Missing Spectator 71
Stephen Prince
4. Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision 87
David Bordwell
5. Is a Cognitive Approach to the Avant-garde
Cinema Perverse? 108
James Peterson
6. The Logic and Legacy of Brechtianism 130
Murray Smith
7. Characterization and Fictional Truth
in the Cinema 149
Paisley Livingston
8. Empathy and (Film) Fiction 175
Alex Neill
9. Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films 195
Cynthia A. Freeland
10. Apt Feelings, or Why "Women's Films"
Aren't Trivial 219
Flo Leibowitz
v
VI Contents
II. Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic
Theories of Film Music 230
Jeff Smith
12. Film Music and Narrative Agency 248
Jerrold Levinson
13. Nonfiction Film and Postmodernist Skepticism 283
Noil Carroll
14. Moving Pictures and the Rhetoric of
Nonfiction Film: Two Approaches 307
Carl Plantinga
15. Film, Reality, and Illusion 325
Gregory Currie
PART THREE. PSYCHOLOGY OF FILM 345
16. The Case for an Ecological Metatheory 347
Joseph Anderson and Barbara Anderson
17. Movies in the Mind's Eye 368
Julian Hochbe'l'lJ and Vi'l'lJinia Brooks
18. Notes on Audience Response 388
Richard J Gerrig and Deborah A. Prentice
PART FOUR. HISTORY AND ANALYSIS 405
19. Toward a New Media Economics 407
Douglas Gomery
20. Columbia Pictures: The Making of a
Motion Picture Major, 1930-1943 419
Tino Balio
2I. "A Brief Romantic Interlude": Dick and
Jane Go to 31/2 Seconds of the Classical
Hollywood Cinema 434
Richard Maltby
22. The Jazz Singer's Reception in the Media
and at the Box Office 460
Donald Crafton
23. Jameson and "Global Aesthetics" 481
Michael Walsh
24. Reconstructing Japanese Film 501
Donald Kirihara
Contents Vll
25. Danish Cinema and the Politics of Recognition 520
Mette Hjort
26. Whose Apparatus? Problems of Film
Exhibition and History 533
Thnce Kepley, Jr.
Selected Bibliography 553
Index 561

CONTRIBUTORS
JOSEPH ANDERSON and BARBARA ANDERSON have written several articles
on film theory. Joseph Anderson's book The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological
Approach to Cognitive Film Theory is forthcoming from Southern Illinois Uni
versity Press.
TINO BALlO is Professor of Film in the Communication Arts Department at
the University ofW isconsin-Madison. His most recent book is Grand Design:
Hollywood as a Modern Motion Picture Enterprise, 1930-1939, published by
Charles Scribner's Sons as volume 5 of the History of the American Cinema
serIes.
DAVID BORDWELL is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies in the Com
munication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His
books include The Cinema of Eisenstein (Harvard University Press, 1993)
and, with Kristin Thompson, Film History: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill,
1994).
VIRGINIA LORING BROOKS is Professor of Film at Brooklyn College. She is
both a scholar and a filmmaker.
NOEL CARROLL is Monroe C. Beardsley Professor of the Philosophy of Art
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Philosophical
Problems ofF ilm Theory (Princeton University Press, 1988), Mystifying Movies
(Columbia University Press, 1988), and The Philosophy ofH orror (Routledge,
1990). He is also widely published in the philosophy of the arts.
DONALD CRAFTON is Professor of Film in the Communication Arts De
partment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has directed the Wis
consin Center for Film and Theater Research and has written on the history
and aesthetics of animated film. His study of Hollywood talkies is forthcom
ing as volume 4 of Scribner's History of the American Cinema series.
GREGORY CURRIE is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the School ofA rts
at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. His Image and Mind: Film, Phi
losophyand Cognitive Science will be published by Cambridge University Press
in 1995. He is currently working on a study of the imagination.
CYNTHIAA. FREELAND is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of
Women's Studies at the University of Houston. She has published widely on
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