Synopses & Reviews
Like a careful gardener, Miriam Hansen planted and interwove traditions of Frankfurt critical theory, modern film history, and her own critical passions and curiosity. She is an important transatlantic bridge for the traditions of enlightenment and film art. She was not only a theoretical mind, but someone who also exerted a strong, practical influence on filmmaking. Because of her, the Minutenfilm saw a rebirth, as well as film projected onto multiple screens, the Max Ophüls renaissance, and much more. We auteurs listened to her. She wasas she sat in her Chicago office and worked, occasionally glancing over the lakeour prophet.”
Alexander Kluge, Berlin Journal
Cinema and Experience is a doubly poignant book: simultaneously a soulful investigation into the complex fate of experience in a mass-mediated modernity and the posthumous publication of the culminating masterwork of one the master scholars of cinema studies. Rich and probing insights resonate from every page of this wonderful volume.”
Dana Polan, author of Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film
Miriam Hansens brilliant analysis of the cinematic experience combines a democratic respect for mass culture with the highest standards of scholarly excellence. Mickey Mouse, slapstick comedy, the photographic image and filmed reality become her keys to deciphering the philosophical differences between Adorno and Benjamin, and the philosophical significance of Kracauers journalistic eye. The presentnew media, social networking, drone warfareis never out of her sight. For the beginning student and the advanced scholar in multiple disciplines, Hansens writing is a gift, and a roadmap to every relevant scholarly debate. This is an indispensable book by an irreplaceable author. We shall miss her.”
Susan Buck-Morss, author of The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project
Miriam Hansens study is the first comprehensive reconstruction of the complex theoretical frames in which Adorno, Benjamin, and Kracauer set their philosophical thoughts on film and cinema. Hansens profound knowledge of the complete works of these influential thinkers allows her to relate questions of film and cinema aesthetics to the core thoughts of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School in manifold and sometimes surprisingly new ways. This study will establish a new look at the Frankfurt School as well as on film theory in general.”
Gertrud Koch, author of Siegfried Kracauer: An Introduction
In her posthumous book, Miriam Hansen offers novel readings, both subtle and robust, of Kracauer, Benjamin, and Adornos reflections on cinema as experience, weaving often disconnected threads into a tapestry of common concepts and concerns that highlights closeness and distance between these writers in unexpected ways. What emerges is yet another Frankfurt School: Critical Theory as media aesthetics and theory of experience.
The triangulation of Adorno and Benjamin with Kracauer permits her to think beyond the annoyingly persistent accounts pitting the Eurocentric mandarin against the progressive film and media theorist. The inspirational role of Kracauer for Benjamin is finally acknowledged and Kracauer is freed from the misunderstanding of his work on photography and film as a naïve realism. And who but Miriam Hansen would have been able to link Benjamins notion of auraexplicated in a much broadened discursive and political contextto Adornos aesthetic of natural beauty? Thinking with Adorno beyond Adorno in modernist aesthetics, with Benjamin beyond Benjamin in media theory, with Kracauer beyond Kracauer on mass culture, she keeps the legacy of Critical Theory alive for an analysis of human experience and cultural practice in our age of digital media.”
Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University
Review
and#8220;Jewell not only makes great use of this primary material, but presents a clear, fair-minded narrative that puts the facts into proper context.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The author is clear and candid. . . . A readable, thought-provoking analysis.and#8221;
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"Taken as a whole, An Invention Without a Future serves as a fantastic overview of conversations concerning film history, while providing thoughtful analyses of important Classical Hollywood films and styles."
Review
"Every essay here is a polished gift from a master of the literary essay."
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“This magisterial book is a gift. . . . There is no other study like it.”
Review
[Hansens] reader is amply rewarded by the rich suggestiveness and expansive quality of her insights. . . . A crowning achievement.”
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“A crowning achievement in its own right.”
Synopsis
In the first book devoted to Charles Burnett, a crucial figure in the history of American cinema often regarded as the most influential member of the LA Rebellion group of African American filmmakers, James Naremore provides a close critical study of all Burnett's major pictures for movies and television, including Killer of Sheep, To Sleep with Anger, The Glass Shield, Nightjohn, The Wedding, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, and Warming by the Devil's Fire. Having accessed new information and rarely seen material, Naremore shows that Burnett's career has developed against the odds and that his artistry, social criticism, humor, and commitment to what he calls "symbolic knowledge" have given his work enduring value for American culture.
Synopsis
One of the and#147;Big Fiveand#8221; studios of Hollywoodand#8217;s golden age, RKO is remembered today primarily for the famous films it produced, from King Kong and Citizen Kane to the Astaire-Rogers musicals. But its own story also provides a fascinating case study of film industry management during one of the most vexing periods in American social history. RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan is Born offers a vivid history of a thirty-year roller coaster of unstable finances, management battles, and artistic gambles. Richard Jewell has used unparalleled access to studio documents generally unavailable to scholars to produce the first business history of RKO, exploring its decision-making processes and illuminating the complex interplay between art and commerce during the heyday of the studio system. Behind the blockbuster films and the glamorous stars, the story of RKO often contained more drama than any of the movies it ever produced.
Synopsis
"Enjoying exclusive access to RKO archives before they were dispersed to the winds, Rick Jewell has crafted a powerful and unprecedented company history that is rich in detail and sharp in insight. Pinpointing both industry ambitions and corporate shenanigans, Jewell offers a tale both gripping and instructive. A major contribution to Hollywood studio history in the classic era."
and#151;Dana Polan, author of Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film
and#147;Richard Jewell has written a definitive portrait of a major Hollywood studio during the heyday of the movies. Enriched by a lode of archival material, Jewelland#8217;s RKO story reconstructs the dynamics of the studio system; its stresses and strains; its logistical challenges; and its in-house rivalries. Some big names are vividly brought to life: David Sarnoff, Pandro Berman, Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, to name a few. Jewell interweaves RKOand#8217;s corporate maneuverings and production agenda with great skill. A more compelling history of a Hollywood major is hard to imagine.and#8221;
and#151;Tino Balio, author of The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946and#150;1973
and#147;A painstakingly researched and lucidly written business history of RKO Studios from its founding through 1942, Richard Jewelland#8217;s RKO Studios: A Titan is Born not only traces the shifting economic fortunes of the studio that gave us King Kong, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and Citizen Kane but also fills an important gap in our understanding of how the studio system survived and at times even thrived during the Golden Age of Hollywood.and#8221;
and#151;Charles Maland, author of Chaplin and American Culture
Synopsis
"Film noir" evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50sand#151;melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. James Naremore's prize-winning book discusses these pictures, but also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. It treats noir as a term in criticism, as an expression of artistic modernism, as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics, as a market strategy, as an evolving style, and as an idea that circulates through all the media. This new and expanded edition of More Than Night contains an additional chapter on film noir in the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
"Supplies the first study of film noir that achieves the sort of intellectual seriousness, depth of research, degree of critical insight, and level of writing that this group of films deserves."and#151;Tom Gunning, Modernism and Modernity
Synopsis
In 1895, Louis Lumière supposedly said that cinema is an invention without a future.” James Naremore uses this legendary remark as a starting point for a meditation on the so-called death of cinema in the digital age, and as a way of introducing a wide-ranging series of his essays on movies past and present. These essays include discussions of authorship, adaptation, and acting; commentaries on Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, John Huston, and Stanley Kubrick; and reviews of more recent work by non-Hollywood directors Pedro Costa, Abbas Kiarostami, Raúl Ruiz, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Important themes recur: the relations between modernity, modernism, and postmodernism; the changing mediascape and death of older technologies; and the need for robust critical writing in an era when print journalism is waning and the humanities are devalued. The book concludes with essays on four major American film critics: James Agee, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris, and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
Synopsis
"James Naremore is one of the most deservedly admired critics of our time, and this collection presents an array of perceptive, readable essays on critical, historical, and theoretical topics that have never been more clearly and articulately explored." David Sterritt, author of
Spike Lee's America
"Reading over this collection of essays, I am struck by how important James Naremore's voice is to the field. The notion of the film scholar as critic is, as he says at one point, an idea that is under siege. Naremores robust, pellucid, and consistently perceptive critical intelligence is the antidote to this denigration of criticism." Richard Allen, co-author of Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema
Synopsis
Animation variously entertains, enchants, and offends, yet there have been no convincing explanations of how these films do so. Shadow of a Mouse proposes performance as the common touchstone for understanding the principles underlying the construction, execution, and reception of cartoons. Donald Craftonand#8217;s interdisciplinary methods draw on film and theater studies, art history, aesthetics, cultural studies, and performance studies to outline a personal view of animated cinema that illuminates its systems of belief and world making. He wryly asks: Are animated characters actors and stars, just like humans? Why do their performances seem live and present, despite our knowing that they are drawings? Why is animation obsessed with distressing the body? Why were California regional artists and Stanislavsky so influential on Disney? Why are the histories of animation and popular theater performance inseparable? How was pictorial space constructed to accommodate embodied acting? Do cartoon performances stimulate positive or negative behaviors in audiences? Why is there so much extreme eating? And why are seemingly insignificant shadows vitally important? Ranging from classics like The Three Little Pigs to contemporary works by and#352;vankmajer and Plympton, these essays will engage the readerand#8217;s imagination as much as the subject of animation performance itself.
Synopsis
and#147;Donald Crafton, our lively guide, shows us around a Tooniverse populated by performers, not just images, who engage us in all the ways their flesh-and-blood counterparts do, and then some. Taking classical animation as his terrain, Crafton nevertheless pushes ongoing discussions of performance, liveness, and corporeality in the directions in which they need to go if they are to help us describe and navigate our increasingly virtual worlds.and#8221;
Philip Auslander, author of Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture
"Every once in a while a book comes along that marks a transformational point in its discipline. Such a book is Donald Crafton's Shadow of a Mouse. Crafton skillfully draws together theoretical sources, animation history, technological development, and social analysis, deftly weaving together thinkers from Disney to Deleuze and Sito to Stanislavsky. The result is a substantial rethinking of animation that will reshape traditional approaches to the medium. Crafton's magisterial grasp of theory and history is livened by a true fan's passion for the subject and a keen sense of humor. Shadow of a Mouse is a must-read for anyone with an interest in performance, embodiment, popular culture, race, or reception."
Mark Langer, Associate Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University
Synopsis
Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adornoaffiliated through friendship, professional ties, and argumentdeveloped an astute philosophical critique of modernity in which technological media played a key role. This book explores in depth their reflections on cinema and photography from the Weimar period up to the 1960s. Miriam Bratu Hansen brings to life an impressive archive of known and, in the case of Kracauer, less known materials and reveals surprising perspectives on canonic texts, including Benjamins artwork essay. Her lucid analysis extrapolates from these writings the contours of a theory of cinema and experience that speaks to questions being posed anew as moving image culture evolves in response to digital technology.
About the Author
The late Miriam Bratu Hansen was Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the founding chair of what is now the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. Her publications include Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film and numerous essays in international film history and film theory.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. and#147;Master Showmen of the Worldand#8221;:
Prehistory and the Formation of the Company
2. and#147;Itand#8217;s RKOand#151;Letand#8217;s Goand#8221;:
The Brown-Schnitzer-LeBaron Regime (1929and#150;1931)
3. and#147;Failure on the installment plan, a ticket at a timeand#8221;:
The Aylesworth-Kahane-Selznick Regime (1932and#150;1933)
4. and#147;All this is very distressing to meand#8221;:
The Aylesworth-Kahane-Cooper Regime (1933and#150;1934)
5. and#147;He feels the company is unsettledand#8221;:
The Aylesworth-McDonough-Kahane Regime (1934and#150;1935)
6. and#147;An awfully long cornerand#8221;:
The Spitz-Briskin Regime (1936and#150;1937)
7. and#147;Plaything of industryand#8221;:
The Spitz-Berman Regime (1938)
8. and#147;The companyand#8217;s best interestand#8221;:
The Schaefer-Berman Regime (1939)
9. and#147;Quality pictures are the lifeblood of this businessand#8221;:
The Schaefer-Edington Regime (1940and#150;1941)
10. and#147;Crossing wiresand#8221;:
The Schaefer-Breen Regime (1941and#150;1942)
Appendix: and#147;The Whole Equation of Picturesand#8221;
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index