Synopses & Reviews
.."". will add much to the repertoire of film scholarship... "" --Choice
This film theory classic brings semiotics and psychoanalytic concepts to bear on the film experience, to answer questions such as: In what way does film address its spectator? How does the film prefigure the spectator? Is the film aware of its orientation towards its spectator? And to what extent does it posit itself as the spectator's lead?
Review
<p>Drawing on the crucial insight of contemporary cinematic theory that films actively create--rather than merely gratify--the spectators who view them, Casetti probes the complex interrelationship between film and viewer, coalescing key concepts from semiotics and psychoanalysis. First published in Italian in 1986 and now translated for the first time into English, this volume is primarily a theoretical tract, but it affords substantial commentary on individual films by directors such as Antonioni, Hitchcock, Bunuel (Bunuel), Welles, and others. Interested not only in how films invent spectators and the reverse, but in how viewers carry films out into the recesses of their lives, Casetti approaches his task in a manner described by his mentor and fellow theorist Christian Metz as science... wrapped in a thin film of poetry or reverie. Hence, the text is by turns straightforward and metaphorical. With its helpful introductions by Metz and Dudley Andrew, and an author's note to the English edition, this translation will add much to the repertoire of film scholarship at the upper-division undergraduate level and above. It is too specialized for beginning undergraduates and novice general readers.L./P>--L. Babener, Central Washington University""Choice"" (01/01/1999)
About the Author
Francesco Casetti, professor of cinema and television at the Catholic University of Milan, is the author of Film Theories 1945-1990. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Paris III and at the University of Iowa.
Nell Andrew is a doctoral student in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.