Description
Light Thoughts is about the interaction of thought between the spectator and the film in cinema; not just a matter of describing the play of a film as a thought process, but rather of formulating ideas about this interaction through detailed analysis of what is actually seen and heard in the cinema.
The chapters include explorations of: gaffes in performance, harmonized activity, and so-called “unison” action; the sale of gender roles and attitudes surreptitiously; the viewer's way of (relentlessly) traveling forward through film; human gesture and the variant forms of comprehension it inspires; the cinematic onlooker-she who sees another person onscreen while we watch her seeing without knowing in any way how and what she takes in; the editorial technique of making the viewer wait for an explanation of what is being seen now; to long discussions of Antonioni, pointing to his camera movement in space and our affiliation with it; the problem of secrecy in cinematic narrative; the function and variability of the close-up insert; the problem of reading the image and handing the obvious; various confusions of narrative time; surveillance, doubt, and point of view; expression, meaning, and the face; and much more.
This book offers a series of original analyses of techniques used in films, which function as the basis for enhancing our understanding of cinema – if not as a medium specifically, then certainly as a medium used for telling stories and conveying the complexities of human character.
Table of Contents
Prelude
1. The Lonely Nobody
2. Unison
3. Buy This!
4. Chariots of Fire
5. I See a Voice
6. Antonioni I: From Here to There
7. Orbital
8. The Film Re-membered
Interlude
9. Antonioni II: Lost or Found
10. A Secret Garden
11. Closer, Closer
12. Thinking with Cinema
13. Forward, Backward, Forward
14. Surveil
15. On Exemplification: Portrait of My Teacher as a Young Man
16. Psst!, Recap
Index
Product details
| Published | Dec 11 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 328 |
| ISBN | 9798765167601 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 21 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Reviews
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.
Related Titles
