Film hieroglyphs : ruptures in classical cinema / Tom Conley, with a new Introduction.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conley, Tom.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion picture plays--History and criticism.

Motion picture plays.

Physical Description:

xix, 252 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2006]

Summary:

At a time when traditional film theory privileged the purely visual. Film Hieroglyphs introduced a new way of watching film - examining the ways in which writing bears on cinema. Author Tom Conley gives special consideration to the points (ruptures) at which story, image, and writing appear to be at odds with one another. Conley hypothesizes that major directors - Renoir, Lang, Walsh, Rossellini - tend unconsciously to meld history and ideology. Graphic elements are seen as simultaneously foreign and integral to the field of the image. From these contradictions emerge hieroglyphs that mark a design attesting to a hidden rhetoric and to configurations of meaning that cinema cannot always control.

Contents:

Hieroglyphs Then and Now ix

1 The Filmic Icon: Boudu sauve des eaux 1

2 The Law of the Letter: Scarlet Street 20

3 Dummies Revived: Manpower 46

4 The Nether Eye: Objective, Burma! 71

5 Facts and Figures of History: Paisan 102

6 The Human Alphabet: La bete humaine 130

7 Decoding Film Noir: The Killers, High Sierra, and White Heat 154.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-241) and index.

Originally published: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

ISBN:

0816649707

9780816649709

OCLC:

69331418

Online:

Publisher description