Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0801860113 ISBN 13: 9780801860119

Casa editrice: JHUP, 1999

Riassunto

The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today.

In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of film studies, philosophy, and psychology explore the emotional appeal of the cinema. Employing a novel cognitive perspective, the volume investigates the relationship between genre and emotion; explores how film narrative, music, and cinematic techniques such as the close-up are used to elicit emotion; and examines the spectator's identification with and response to film characters.

An impressive range of films and topics is brought together by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, including: the success ofStella Dallas and An Affair to Remember as tearjerkers; the power ofNight of the Living Dead to inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked inThe Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise; the emotional basis of film comedy as seen inWhen Harry Met Sally; the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Ark andLocal Hero to arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion inOnce Upon a Time in the West and E.T.; the emotive use of music in The Elephant Man and A Clockwork Orange; Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution inCasablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Day andThe Crying Game; portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs,Flaming Creatures, and Shivers; and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces inYankee Doodle Dandy and Blade Runner.

Passionate Views offers a new approach to our understanding of film and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the emotional power of motion pictures and their relationship to the central concerns of our lives, as well as by the techniques filmmakers use to move an audience.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Due to the consistently high quality of the pieces, Passionate Views makes a significant contribution to film studies research."

(Mette Hjort Canadian Journal of Film Studies)

"A valuable collection of essays on the subject of film and emotion from a cognitive perspective. The contributors to this volume are top scholars whose work is known internationally. Their scholarship is sound, their arguments are well supported, and their essays are clearly written. Passionate Views is a substantial contribution to the fields of film theory and aesthetics."

(Joseph D. Anderson, Georgia State University)

L'autore:

Carl Plantinga is an associate professor of film and director of the Screenwriting and Film Studies Program at Hollins College.Greg M. Smith is an assistant professor of communication studies at Carlow College.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: JHUP
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0801860113
• ISBN 13: 9780801860119
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 312
• Redattore: Plantinga Carl