Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is a book about the nature of film: about the nature of moving images, about the viewer's relation to film, and about the kinds of narrative that film is capable of presenting. It represents a very decisive break with the semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film which have dominated discussion. The central thesis is that film is essentially a pictorial medium and that the movement of film images is real rather than illusory. A general theory of pictorial representation is presented, which insists on the realism of pictures and the impossibility of assimilating them to language. It criticizes attempts to explain the psychology of film viewing in terms of the viewer's imaginary occupation of a position within the world of film. On the contrary, film viewing is nearly always impersonal.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: the essence of cinema
• Part I Representation in Film
• 1 The myth of illusion
• 2 The imprint of nature
• 3 Realism
• 4 Languages of art and languages of film
• Part II Imagination
• 5 Imagination, the general theory
• 6 Imagination, personal and impersonal
• 7 Travels in narrative time
• Part III Interpretation
• 8 The interpretative problem
• 9 Narrative and narrators

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Working in the tradition of Noel Carroll, Stanley Cavell, Seymour Chatman, Ian Jarvie, and others, Currie attempts to formulate a philosophical argument about the nature of film and film narrative. Starting, he says, from cognitive science, he criticizes much of classical film theory and what he sees as the three main strands of contemporary theory--semiotics, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. Currie dismisses the analogies to language made by semioticians, arguing that film is primarily a realistic pictorial medium; he dismisses the psychoanalytic model, opting for a more straightforward pictorial and narrative competence like Chomsky's model of linguistic competence; and he defends a rationalist model of interpretation heavily dependent on individual intentionality, avoiding or dismissing most Marxist theory. Currie is often provocative, as when he analyzes the nature of film images and when he criticizes the theory of "suture," though some will think his analysis is dominated more by a traditional rationalist model than by a cognitive science model. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. K. S. Nolley Willamette University