Author: Jeffrey Chown
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
In this extensive, critical survey of Francis Coppola's films, Chown attempts an auteur theory analysis tempered with an interesting overview of the turbulent economic and corporate controversies that have surrounded Coppola. The book follows Coppola's career in chronological order, from You're a Big Boy Now (1967) to Gardens of Stone (1987). Chown is less concerned with Coppola's themes than with his financially ruinous quest for a cinema that is both commercial and personal, and publicly accessible as well as visually experimental and narratively nonlinear. Chown concedes that these seemingly contradictory goals are not always achieved by Coppola, but he presents a timely defense of one of the most important new Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s. The book also offers a much needed introduction to Coppola's work as a screenwriter in the 1960s, contrasting his early narrative skills with his evolving desire to break away from narrative structure. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, community college level up. Choice Hollywood Auteur details the struggle between art and commerce in Hollywood filmmaking as exemplified by the career of Francis Coppola. Amid the dealmaking, creative compromise, and collaboration of modern American filmmaking, Coppola's career demonstrates how problematic the term auteur is in this milieu. Chown assesses the romanticism surrounding the cult of film directors in general and Coppola in particular. He argues that, ultimately, the idea that the actual personal vision of one director can be expressed in big-budget Hollywood films is highly suspect. Yet, the weight of this insightful volume suggests that Coppola may have an individualistic genius in the management of his career. Chown concludes that Coppola's status as a role model for a generation of young filmmakers and directors is well earned.
Hollywood Auteur
Author: Jeffrey Chown
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
In this extensive, critical survey of Francis Coppola's films, Chown attempts an auteur theory analysis tempered with an interesting overview of the turbulent economic and corporate controversies that have surrounded Coppola. The book follows Coppola's career in chronological order, from You're a Big Boy Now (1967) to Gardens of Stone (1987). Chown is less concerned with Coppola's themes than with his financially ruinous quest for a cinema that is both commercial and personal, and publicly accessible as well as visually experimental and narratively nonlinear. Chown concedes that these seemingly contradictory goals are not always achieved by Coppola, but he presents a timely defense of one of the most important new Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s. The book also offers a much needed introduction to Coppola's work as a screenwriter in the 1960s, contrasting his early narrative skills with his evolving desire to break away from narrative structure. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, community college level up. Choice Hollywood Auteur details the struggle between art and commerce in Hollywood filmmaking as exemplified by the career of Francis Coppola. Amid the dealmaking, creative compromise, and collaboration of modern American filmmaking, Coppola's career demonstrates how problematic the term auteur is in this milieu. Chown assesses the romanticism surrounding the cult of film directors in general and Coppola in particular. He argues that, ultimately, the idea that the actual personal vision of one director can be expressed in big-budget Hollywood films is highly suspect. Yet, the weight of this insightful volume suggests that Coppola may have an individualistic genius in the management of his career. Chown concludes that Coppola's status as a role model for a generation of young filmmakers and directors is well earned.
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
In this extensive, critical survey of Francis Coppola's films, Chown attempts an auteur theory analysis tempered with an interesting overview of the turbulent economic and corporate controversies that have surrounded Coppola. The book follows Coppola's career in chronological order, from You're a Big Boy Now (1967) to Gardens of Stone (1987). Chown is less concerned with Coppola's themes than with his financially ruinous quest for a cinema that is both commercial and personal, and publicly accessible as well as visually experimental and narratively nonlinear. Chown concedes that these seemingly contradictory goals are not always achieved by Coppola, but he presents a timely defense of one of the most important new Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s. The book also offers a much needed introduction to Coppola's work as a screenwriter in the 1960s, contrasting his early narrative skills with his evolving desire to break away from narrative structure. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, community college level up. Choice Hollywood Auteur details the struggle between art and commerce in Hollywood filmmaking as exemplified by the career of Francis Coppola. Amid the dealmaking, creative compromise, and collaboration of modern American filmmaking, Coppola's career demonstrates how problematic the term auteur is in this milieu. Chown assesses the romanticism surrounding the cult of film directors in general and Coppola in particular. He argues that, ultimately, the idea that the actual personal vision of one director can be expressed in big-budget Hollywood films is highly suspect. Yet, the weight of this insightful volume suggests that Coppola may have an individualistic genius in the management of his career. Chown concludes that Coppola's status as a role model for a generation of young filmmakers and directors is well earned.
The Elusive Auteur
Author: Barrett Hodsdon
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627886
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
The director's authorial role in filmmaking--the extent to which a film reflects his or her individual style and creative vision--has been much debated among film critics and scholars for decades. Drawing on generations of criticism, this study describes how the designation "auteur" has gone from stylistic criterion to product label--in what has always been an essentially collaborative industry. Examining the controversy in regard to Hollywood directors, the author compares directors and would-be auteurs of the classic studio system with those of contemporary Hollywood and its new climate of cultural entrepreneurship.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627886
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
The director's authorial role in filmmaking--the extent to which a film reflects his or her individual style and creative vision--has been much debated among film critics and scholars for decades. Drawing on generations of criticism, this study describes how the designation "auteur" has gone from stylistic criterion to product label--in what has always been an essentially collaborative industry. Examining the controversy in regard to Hollywood directors, the author compares directors and would-be auteurs of the classic studio system with those of contemporary Hollywood and its new climate of cultural entrepreneurship.
Post-Fordist Cinema
Author: Jeff Menne
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545088
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
The New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s is celebrated as a time when maverick directors bucked the system. Against the backdrop of counterculture sensibilities and the prominence of auteur theory, New Hollywood directors such as Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola seemed to embody creative individualism. In Post-Fordist Cinema, Jeff Menne rewrites the history of this period, arguing that auteur theory served to reconcile directors to Hollywood’s corporate project. Menne traces the surprising affinities between auteur theory and management gurus such as Peter Drucker, who envisioned a more open and flexible corporate style. In founding production companies, New Hollywood filmmakers took part in the creation of new corporate models that emphasized entrepreneurial creativity. For firms such as Kirk Douglas’s Bryna Productions, Altman’s Lion’s Gate Films, the Zanuck-Brown Company, and BBS Productions, the counterculture ethos limbered up the studio system’s sclerotic production process—with striking parallels to how management theory conceived of the role of the individual within the firm. Menne offers insightful readings of how films such as Lonely Are the Brave, Brewster McCloud, Jaws, and The King of Marvin Gardens narrate the conditions in which they were created, depicting shifting notions of work and corporate structure. While auteur theory allowed directors to cast themselves as independent creators, Menne argues that its most consequential impact came as a management doctrine. An ambitious rethinking of New Hollywood, Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great director and the birth of the “creative economy.”
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545088
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
The New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s is celebrated as a time when maverick directors bucked the system. Against the backdrop of counterculture sensibilities and the prominence of auteur theory, New Hollywood directors such as Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola seemed to embody creative individualism. In Post-Fordist Cinema, Jeff Menne rewrites the history of this period, arguing that auteur theory served to reconcile directors to Hollywood’s corporate project. Menne traces the surprising affinities between auteur theory and management gurus such as Peter Drucker, who envisioned a more open and flexible corporate style. In founding production companies, New Hollywood filmmakers took part in the creation of new corporate models that emphasized entrepreneurial creativity. For firms such as Kirk Douglas’s Bryna Productions, Altman’s Lion’s Gate Films, the Zanuck-Brown Company, and BBS Productions, the counterculture ethos limbered up the studio system’s sclerotic production process—with striking parallels to how management theory conceived of the role of the individual within the firm. Menne offers insightful readings of how films such as Lonely Are the Brave, Brewster McCloud, Jaws, and The King of Marvin Gardens narrate the conditions in which they were created, depicting shifting notions of work and corporate structure. While auteur theory allowed directors to cast themselves as independent creators, Menne argues that its most consequential impact came as a management doctrine. An ambitious rethinking of New Hollywood, Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great director and the birth of the “creative economy.”
Francis Ford Coppola
Author: Jeff Menne
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096789
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, Jeff Menne argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, Menne reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1970) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, Menne illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family--and how his studio American Zoetrope came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096789
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, Jeff Menne argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, Menne reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1970) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, Menne illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family--and how his studio American Zoetrope came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.
Classic Hollywood
Author: Veronica Pravadelli
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096738
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096738
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Author: Quentin Tarantino
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063112531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction—at once hilarious, delicious and brutal—is the always surprising, sometimes shocking, novelization of his Academy Award winning film. RICK DALTON—Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it? CLIFF BOOTH—Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have got away with murder. . . . SHARON TATE—She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills. CHARLES MANSON—The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063112531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction—at once hilarious, delicious and brutal—is the always surprising, sometimes shocking, novelization of his Academy Award winning film. RICK DALTON—Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it? CLIFF BOOTH—Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have got away with murder. . . . SHARON TATE—She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills. CHARLES MANSON—The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.
Authoring Hal Ashby
Author: Aaron Hunter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501308459
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Casting fresh light on New Hollywood – one of American cinema's most fertile eras – Authoring Hal Ashby is the first sustained argument that, rather than a period dominated by genius auteurs, New Hollywood was an era of intense collaboration producing films of multiple-authorship. Centering its discussion on the films and filmmaking practice of director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There), Hunter's work demonstrates how the auteur paradigm has served not only to diminish several key films and filmmakers of the era, but also to underestimate and undervalue the key contributions to the era's films of cinematographers, editors, writers and other creative crew members. Placing Ashby's films and career within the historical context of his era to show how he actively resisted the auteur label, the author demonstrates how this resistance led to Ashby's marginalization by film executives of his time and within subsequent film scholarship. Through rigorous analysis of several films, Hunter moves on to demonstrate Ashby's own signature authorial contributions to his films and provides thorough and convincing demonstrations of the authorial contributions made by several of Ashby's key collaborators. Building on emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship, Authoring Hal Ashby lays out a creative new approach to understanding one of Hollywood cinema's most exciting eras and one of its most vital filmmakers.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501308459
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Casting fresh light on New Hollywood – one of American cinema's most fertile eras – Authoring Hal Ashby is the first sustained argument that, rather than a period dominated by genius auteurs, New Hollywood was an era of intense collaboration producing films of multiple-authorship. Centering its discussion on the films and filmmaking practice of director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There), Hunter's work demonstrates how the auteur paradigm has served not only to diminish several key films and filmmakers of the era, but also to underestimate and undervalue the key contributions to the era's films of cinematographers, editors, writers and other creative crew members. Placing Ashby's films and career within the historical context of his era to show how he actively resisted the auteur label, the author demonstrates how this resistance led to Ashby's marginalization by film executives of his time and within subsequent film scholarship. Through rigorous analysis of several films, Hunter moves on to demonstrate Ashby's own signature authorial contributions to his films and provides thorough and convincing demonstrations of the authorial contributions made by several of Ashby's key collaborators. Building on emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship, Authoring Hal Ashby lays out a creative new approach to understanding one of Hollywood cinema's most exciting eras and one of its most vital filmmakers.
Hollywood's New Yorker
Author: Marc Raymond
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438445733
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
When Martin Scorsese finally won an Academy Award in 2007, for The Departed, it was widely viewed as the crowning achievement of a remarkable film career. But what it also represented was an acceptance by Hollywood of a man who became a prestigious auteur precisely because of his status as an outsider from New York. For someone with a high-culture reputation like Scorsese's, this middlebrow sign of respectability was not about cultural standing; rather, it was about using and even sacrificing his distinctive outsider status for a greater share of industry authority within the world of Hollywood. In Hollywood's New Yorker, Marc Raymond offers a fresh look at Scorsese's career in relation to the critical and social environment of the past fifty years. He traces Scorsese's career and films through his association with various cultural institutions, from his role as a student and instructor at New York University, to his move to Hollywood and his relationship with the studio system, to his relationship with prestigious institutions like the Museum of Modern Art. This sociological approach to film authorship provides analysis of previously overlooked Scorsese projects, particularly his documentary work, and gives importance to the role his extracurricular activities in the film preservation movement have played in the rise of his reputation. Hollywood's New Yorker places Scorsese and his films firmly within the various time periods of his career and compares the director with his peers, from fellow New Yorkers like Brian De Palma and Woody Allen to New Hollywood movie brats such as Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. The result is a complete picture of Scorsese and the post–World War II American film culture he has both shaped and been shaped by.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438445733
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
When Martin Scorsese finally won an Academy Award in 2007, for The Departed, it was widely viewed as the crowning achievement of a remarkable film career. But what it also represented was an acceptance by Hollywood of a man who became a prestigious auteur precisely because of his status as an outsider from New York. For someone with a high-culture reputation like Scorsese's, this middlebrow sign of respectability was not about cultural standing; rather, it was about using and even sacrificing his distinctive outsider status for a greater share of industry authority within the world of Hollywood. In Hollywood's New Yorker, Marc Raymond offers a fresh look at Scorsese's career in relation to the critical and social environment of the past fifty years. He traces Scorsese's career and films through his association with various cultural institutions, from his role as a student and instructor at New York University, to his move to Hollywood and his relationship with the studio system, to his relationship with prestigious institutions like the Museum of Modern Art. This sociological approach to film authorship provides analysis of previously overlooked Scorsese projects, particularly his documentary work, and gives importance to the role his extracurricular activities in the film preservation movement have played in the rise of his reputation. Hollywood's New Yorker places Scorsese and his films firmly within the various time periods of his career and compares the director with his peers, from fellow New Yorkers like Brian De Palma and Woody Allen to New Hollywood movie brats such as Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. The result is a complete picture of Scorsese and the post–World War II American film culture he has both shaped and been shaped by.
Hollywood's Censor
Author: Thomas Doherty
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231512848
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
From 1934 to 1954 Joseph I. Breen, a media-savvy Victorian Irishman, reigned over the Production Code Administration, the Hollywood office tasked with censoring the American screen. Though little known outside the ranks of the studio system, this former journalist and public relations agent was one of the most powerful men in the motion picture industry. As enforcer of the puritanical Production Code, Breen dictated "final cut" over more movies than anyone in the history of American cinema. His editorial decisions profoundly influenced the images and values projected by Hollywood during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Cultural historian Thomas Doherty tells the absorbing story of Breen's ascent to power and the widespread effects of his reign. Breen vetted story lines, blue-penciled dialogue, and excised footage (a process that came to be known as "Breening") to fit the demands of his strict moral framework. Empowered by industry insiders and millions of like-minded Catholics who supported his missionary zeal, Breen strove to protect innocent souls from the temptations beckoning from the motion picture screen. There were few elements of cinematic production beyond Breen's reach he oversaw the editing of A-list feature films, low-budget B movies, short subjects, previews of coming attractions, and even cartoons. Populated by a colorful cast of characters, including Catholic priests, Jewish moguls, visionary auteurs, hardnosed journalists, and bluenose agitators, Doherty's insightful, behind-the-scenes portrait brings a tumultuous era and an individual both feared and admired to vivid life.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231512848
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
From 1934 to 1954 Joseph I. Breen, a media-savvy Victorian Irishman, reigned over the Production Code Administration, the Hollywood office tasked with censoring the American screen. Though little known outside the ranks of the studio system, this former journalist and public relations agent was one of the most powerful men in the motion picture industry. As enforcer of the puritanical Production Code, Breen dictated "final cut" over more movies than anyone in the history of American cinema. His editorial decisions profoundly influenced the images and values projected by Hollywood during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Cultural historian Thomas Doherty tells the absorbing story of Breen's ascent to power and the widespread effects of his reign. Breen vetted story lines, blue-penciled dialogue, and excised footage (a process that came to be known as "Breening") to fit the demands of his strict moral framework. Empowered by industry insiders and millions of like-minded Catholics who supported his missionary zeal, Breen strove to protect innocent souls from the temptations beckoning from the motion picture screen. There were few elements of cinematic production beyond Breen's reach he oversaw the editing of A-list feature films, low-budget B movies, short subjects, previews of coming attractions, and even cartoons. Populated by a colorful cast of characters, including Catholic priests, Jewish moguls, visionary auteurs, hardnosed journalists, and bluenose agitators, Doherty's insightful, behind-the-scenes portrait brings a tumultuous era and an individual both feared and admired to vivid life.
Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions
Author: Warren Buckland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136501118
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
In Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place: How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry? How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena? And, How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems? He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts, and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination; it also teaches students how to write theory, by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments. The book consists of nine chapters that closely examine a series of canonical film books and essays in great detail, by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, Thomas Elsaesser, Stephen Heath, and Slavoj Žižek, among others.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136501118
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
In Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place: How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry? How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena? And, How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems? He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts, and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination; it also teaches students how to write theory, by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments. The book consists of nine chapters that closely examine a series of canonical film books and essays in great detail, by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, Thomas Elsaesser, Stephen Heath, and Slavoj Žižek, among others.