Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Plantinga, Carl, Editor.

Smith, Greg M., Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Psychological aspects.

Motion pictures.

Cognitive psychology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 p.) ill

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Johns Hopkins University Press 1999

Summary:

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 of Stella Dallasand An Affair to Rememberas tearjerkers; the power of Night of the Living Deadto inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked in The Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise;the emotional basis of film comedy as seen in When Harry Met Sally;the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Arkand Local Heroto arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion in Once Upon a Time in the Westand E.T.;the emotive use of music in The Elephant Manand A Clockwork Orange;Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution in Casablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Dayand The Crying Game;portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs, Flaming Creatures, and Shivers;and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces in Yankee Doodle Dandyand Blade Runner.Passionate Viewsoffers 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.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

I KINDS OF FILMS, KINDS OF EMOTIONS

1 Film, Emotion, and Genre

2 Sentiment in Film Viewing

3 The Sublime in Cinema

4 The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy

II FILM TECHNIQUE, FILM NARRATIVE, AND EMOTION

5 Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure

6 Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film

7 Movie Music as Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score

8 Time and Timing

III DESIRE, IDENTIFICATION, AND EMPATHY

9 Narrative Desire

10 Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film

11 Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances

12 The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film

Notes

Select Bibliography

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4214-0770-1

OCLC:

1541769868