Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time

Directly contributing to the growing interdisciplinary areas of film-philosophy and modernist studies, as well as film history and theory, Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time analyses four exemplary 1960s European films. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) are addressed for their unique contributions to the philosophical understanding of negativity, a discussion for which German philosopher Theodor Adorno's late work is the main literary source. Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961) and L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) are read through their contrasting subversive renderings of temporality, an analysis selectively utilising French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'time-image'. Appropriate for both academic readers and informed general enthusiasts of the cinema it addresses, the book demonstrates both philosophy's particular usefulness for the analysis of modernist cinema and film form's inherent potential for radical philosophical impact.

PART I: THE NEGATIVE IMPRESSION

Cinema's Ontological Challenge

Reflexive Formal Violence

PART II: AN ANXIOUS PAUSE

Dangerous Temporalities

A New World

Conclusion

Works Cited

Notes

Index