Post-war modernist cinema and philosophy : confronting negativity and time / Hamish Ford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ford, Hamish, 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Philosophy.

Motion pictures.

Time in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

x, 284 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

Directly contributing to the growing interdisciplinary areas of 'film-philosophy' and modernism studies, as well as film history and theory, Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time analyses four 1960s European feature films as exemplary of cinematic modernism. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) are addressed for their unique and challenging contributions to the philosophical understanding of negativity, a discussion for which German philosopher Theodor Adorno's late work is the main literary source. Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961) and L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) are then read through their contrasting violent renderings of temporality; an analysis selectively utilising French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'time-image'. Appropriate for academic readers and informed general enthusiasts of the cinema it addresses, the book demonstrates both philosophy's particular usefulness for the analysis of post-war modernist cinema and film form's inherent potential for radical philosophical impact. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Negative Impression

1 Cinema's Ontological Challenge 27

Radical visions of modernity 27

Bergman's interpersonal violence 38

Godard's impossible subjectivity 45

Stressing the negative 54

Touching the void 62

The reflexive charge of absence 67

Inscriptions of a world we don't believe in 74

2 Formal Violence 84

The impact of space-time confusion 84

Dissonance and fragmentation 91

Anguished authorship 102

Autonomous materiality 113

The violent, open image 119

Intertextual suffering 123

Gazing into negative space 132

Part II An Anxious Pause

3 Dangerous Temporalities 143

Controversies in time 144

Resnais' achronological shards 149

Antonioni's insidious durée 157

Cinema's 'essential' temporality 164

Advancing forms of time 173

Irrational intervals and indeterminacy 182

An ambivalent, impossible pause 187

4 The New World 201

Temporality's gaze 201

The underground event 210

Uncomfortably at home 216

An immanent, alien landscape 224

The eternal return of difference 228

Temporality and difficult thought 233

Creativity and impower 238.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230368873

0230368875

OCLC:

796757161