Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

First published in 1977, this popular book has become the source on film and media. Now, James Monaco offers a revised and rewritten third edition incorporating every major aspect of this dynamic medium right up to the present.Looking at film from many vantage points, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia explores the medium as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to such other narrative media as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, Monaco discusses those 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 a key departure from the book's previous editions, the new and still-evolving digital context of film is now emphasized throughout How to Read a Film. A new chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century with a thorough discussion of topics like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film. Monaco has likewise doubled the size and scope of his "Film and Media: A Chronology" appendix. The book also features a new introduction, an expanded bibliography, and hundreds of illustrative black-and-white film stills and diagrams. It is a must for all film students, media buffs, and movie fans.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• I Film as an Art
• The Nature of Art
• The Spectrum of Art: Modes of Discourse
• Film, Recording, and the Other Arts
• Film, Photography, and Painting
• Film and the Novel
• Film and Theater
• Film and Music
• Film and the Environmental Arts
• The Structure of Art
• II Technology: Image and Sound
• Art and Technology
• Image Technology
• Sound Technology
• The Lens
• The Camera
• The Filmstock
• Negatives, Prints, and Generations
• Aspect Ratio
• Grain Gauge, and Speed
• Contrast, Tone, and Color
• The Soundtrack
• Post-Production
• Editing
• Mixing and Looping
• Special Effects
• Opticals and the Laboratory
• The Uses of Video
• Projection
• III The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax
• Signs
• The Physiology of Perception
• Denotative and Connotative Meaning: Reading the Image
• Syntax
• Codes
• Mise en Scene (The Framed Image)
• The Diachronic Shot
• Sound
• Montage
• Reading the Narrative
• IV The Shape of Film History
• ""The Movies"": Economics
• The Birthe of Film
• The Silent Business
• Sound
• The Studios
• Film versus Television
• the Conglomerates and Independents
• ""The Film"": Politics
• Ontological Level
• Mimetic Level
• Inherent Level
• Psychopolitics
• Sociopolitics
• ""The Cinema"": Esthetics
• Creating an Art
• Lumiere versus Melies
• The Silent Feature: Realism versus Expressionism
• Hollywood: Genre versus Auteur
• Neorealism and After: Hollywood versus the World
• The New Wave and the Third World: Entertainment versus Communication (The New Wave
• Avant Gard, Direct Cinema and Cinema Verite
• England
• Italy
• Sweden
• Eastern Europe
• The Third World
• Japan and Asia
• New French Cinema
• Das Neue Kino
• Swiss Cinema
• American Film Now)
• The Eighties and Beyond: Democracy and Technology: End of Cinema
• V Film Theory: Form and Function
• The Poet and the Philosopher: Lindsay and Munsterberg
• Expressionism and Realism: Arnheim and Kracauer
• Montage: Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Balazs, and Formalism
• Mise en Scene: Neorealism, Bazin, and Godard
• Film Speaks and Acts: Metz and Contemporary Theory
• VI Media
• Print and Electronic Media
• The Technology of Mechanical Electronic Media
• Radio and Records
• Television and Video
• A Concluding Note: Media Democracy
• Appendix I A Standard Glossary for Film and Media Criticism
• Appendix II Reading about Film and Media
• Part 1 A Basic Library
• Part 2 Information
• Appendix III Film and Media: A Chronology
• Index