Cineliteracy

PART ONE: How Movies Work = 2 1. ART, NARRATIVE, AND PLAY: THE FOUNDATIONS OF IMAGINARY EXPERIENCE = 5 What If? = 6 Some Characteristics of Narrative Play = 11 The Limits of Narrative Play = 13 2. MEDIA AND AESTHETIC RESPONSE = 15 The Theatrical Viewing Situation = 15 Involvement and the Eye: The Structures of Perception = 17 Relaxing Inhibitions = 23 The Mechanism of Concentration: Voyeurism as Play = 24 3. THE STRUCTURES OF EVERYDAY LIFE = 27 The Contributions of Culture = 27 The Problem of Intercultural Communication = 35 Mimesis and Pleasure = 37 4. ART AS ARTIFICE = 39 Construction Versus Documentation = 39 The Legacy of the Larger Art Milieu = 43 5. FILM'S PRIMARY ARTIFICES = 46 Screen Shape = 47 The Dynamic Quality of the Image = 49 The Narrativity of the Image = 51 Making Scenes "Readable": Angle, Focus, and Shot Length = 52 Theater Time = 57 6. STORY CONVENTIONS = 60 The Storied World = 60 Genre: The Guiding of Anticipations = 62 Style as Genre = 65 Irony and Allusion = 71 Plot and Story Architecture: Languages Versus Articulations = 73 7. THE HUMAN DIMENSION = 77 Characters Versus People = 77 The Lesson of Caricature = 82 Mime: Caricature in Motion = 86 The Validating Function of Actors = 89 Ensemble Acting: Characters as an Imaginary Society = 93 Social Settings = 94 Movies as Social Models = 99 PART TWO: The Cinema in Cultural Perspective = 106 8. THE POPULAR ARTS: A BRIEF PREHISTORY OF THE CINEMA = 112 Melodrama and the Genesis of Popular Theater = 113 The Pivotal Role of Louis Daguerre = 116 What Price Art? = 119 The Rise of Popular Fiction = 122 A Sense of Human Solidarity? = 126 Vaudeville: The Springboard to Cinema = 126 An Aesthetic of Excitement = 131 9. THE ANTIPOPULAR ARTS = 134 From Patronage to Penury: Art and the Industrial Revolution = 135 A Revolution in Thought = 136 A New Kind of Art = 137 The Results of Modernism = 141 Taming Modernism = 142 10. CINEMA AND LITERATURE = 145 Opposed Aesthetics = 146 Structural Similarities = 150 The Cinema as Literary Metaphor = 153 The Cinema as Scapegoat = 156 11. FILM, THE VISUAL ARTS, AND THEATER = 159 The Visual Arts = 159 Theater = 162 12. FUSIONS = 167 Art, Information, and Society: The Limits of Aesthetic Synthesis = 171 PART THREE: Explorations = 174 13. VALUES IN ART, VALUES IN FILM = 179 Films as Objects, Films as Events = 180 Historicity Versus the Eternal = 182 The Culinary Analogy = 184 The Problem of Taste = 185 The Limits of Film Criticism = 187 14. FILMS FROM FICTION: JULES AND JIM AND BLOW-UP: TWO WAYS TOWARD THE FUTURE? = 189 Irony and Romance: Jules and Jim = 192 Truffaut and Adaptation = 193 Truffaut's Intention: A Popular Film = 195 The Special Language of Jules and Jim = 196 Momentum and Spectacle: A Sporting Aesthetic = 207 Truffaut's Accomplishment = 208 Blow-Up = 211 The Inspiration: Cortázar's Story = 212 The Absence of a Past = 213 The Story of Blow-Up = 214 Antonioni's Method = 226 The Popularity of Blow-Up = 229 15. FILM AND THEATER = 231 The Subversion of Space: Peter Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream = 237 A Cinema for the Age of Waste: Clive Donner's The Caretaker = 244 The Anti-Cinema of Peter Brook: Marat／Sade and King Lear = 250 16. CREATIVITY AND COMMUNITY: REFLECTIONS ON THE INDEPENDENT CINEMA = 264 Artistic Subcultures = 265 Formal Experiments = 266 The Cinema of Rebellion = 274 Breaking Down Feature Film Conventions = 278 The Fragility of Independent Film = 281 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY = 286 INDEX = 293

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