How to Read a Film

Description

Monaco offers a special anniversary edition of his classic work, featuring a new preface and several new sections, including an "Essential Library: One Hundred Books About Film and Media You Should Read" and "One Hundred Films You Should See." As in previous editions, Monaco once again looks at film from many vantage points, as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to other narrative media such as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, the book discusses the elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning, and, more importantly, how we can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate. In addition, Monaco stresses the ever-evolving digital context of film throughout and his chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century.

• "Anyone who writes about film, or who is interested in film seriously, just has to have it." —Richard Roud, Director of the New York Film Festival

About the Author(s)

James Monaco, President, UNET

Table of Contents

Introduction
1:FILM AS ART: The nature of Art, Ways of Looking at Art, Film, Recording, and the Other Arts, The Structure of Art
2:TECHNOLOGY: IMAGE AND SOUND: Art and Technology, The Lens, The Camera, The Filmstock, The Soundtrack, Post-Production, Videon and Film, Projection
3:THE LANGUAGE OF FILM: SIGNS AND SYNTAX: Signs, syntax
4:THE SHAPE OF FILM HISTORY: Movies/Film/Cinema, "Movies": Economics, "Film": Politics, "Cinema": Aesthetics
5:FILM THEORY: FORM AND FUNCTION: The Critis, The Poet and the Philosopher: Lindsay and Munsterberg, Expressionism and Realism: Arnheim and Kracauer, Montage: Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Balzacs, and Formalism, Mise en Scene: Neorealism, Bazin, and Godard, Film Speaks and Acts: Metz and Contemporary Theory
6:MEDIA: IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS: Community, Print and Electronic Media, Radio and Records, Television and Video
7:MULTIMEDIA: THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: The Digital Revolution, The Myth of Multimedia, The Myth of Virtual Reality, The Myth of Cyberspace, "What Is to be Done"
FILM AND MEDIA: A CHRONOLOGY - READING ABOUT FILM AND MEDIA - INDEX