Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A history of images in motion that explores the "special effect" of cinema.

It has been said that all cinema is a special effect. In this highly original examination of time in film Sean Cubitt tries to get at the root of the uncanny effect produced by images and sounds that don't quite align with reality. What is it that cinema does? Cubitt proposes a history of images in motion from a digital perspective, for a digital audience.

From the viewpoint of art history, an image is discrete, still. How can a moving image--constructed from countless constituent images--even be considered an image? And where in time is an image in motion located? Cubitt traces the complementary histories of two forms of the image/motion relationship--the stillness of the image combined with the motion of the body (exemplified by what Cubitt calls the "protocinema of railway travel") and the movement of the image combined with the stillness of the body (exemplified by melodrama and the magic lantern). He argues that the magic of cinema arises from the intertwining relations between different kinds of movement, different kinds of time, and different kinds of space.

He begins with a discussion of "pioneer cinema," focusing on the contributions of French cinematic pioneers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He then examines the sound cinema of the 1930s, examining film effects in works by Eisenstein, Jean Renoir, and Hollywood's RKO studio. Finally he considers what he calls "post cinema," examining the postwar development of the "spatialization" of time through slow motion, freeze-frame, and steadi-cam techniques. Students of film will find Cubitt's analyses of noncanonical films like Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as enlightening as his fresh takes on such classics as Renoir's Rules of the Game .

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. viii)
• 1. Entree: The Object of Film and the Film Object (p. 1)
• Part I Pioneer Cinema (p. 13)
• 2. Temporal Film: The Pixel (p. 14)
• 3. Magical Film: The Cut (p. 42)
• 4. Graphical Film: The Vector (p. 70)
• Part II Normative Cinema (p. 99)
• 5. Total Film: Music (p. 100)
• 6. Realist Film: Sound (p. 130)
• 7. Classical Film: Dialogue (p. 160)
• Part III Post Cinema (p. 189)
• 8. Neoclassical Film (p. 190)
• 9. Neobaroque Film (p. 217)
• 10. Technological Film (p. 245)
• 11. Oneiric Film (p. 273)
• 12. Revisionary Film (p. 300)
• 13. Cosmopolitan Film (p. 331)
• 14. Outree: Mediation and Media Formation (p. 359)
• Filmography (p. 367)
• Notes (p. 383)
• References (p. 399)
• Index (p. 445)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Meaningful communications are essential to sustaining a democratic society and a world that acknowledges and negotiates differences. In this theoretically sophisticated book, Cubitt (Univ. of Waikato, New Zealand) explores the history of the cinematic object in various forms over time and offers one way of understanding why contemporary culture appears to lack meaningful forms of democratic discourse. The story he tells about the evolution and transformation of cinematic objects and images is not encouraging. Over the 20th century--especially after the crisis of representation engendered by WW II and Vietnam--audiences received "objects of awe" and images that were more sublime than "real." The spectacle of special effects--especially after the 1970s--became more powerful than dialogue (and narrations of the nation); cinema moved away from an engagement with history to a fascination with sublime and timeless images that were essentially stranded in time. This change was advanced by the triumph of consumer capitalism with its need to turn the consumption of objects and images into a fetish. Consumption, in other words, impeded human communication. This highly original treatment of the nature of film and modern culture should be read alongside the work of Marshall Berman and Walter Benjamin. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Graduate and research collections. J. Bodnar Indiana University Bloomington