Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory Noël Carroll

Abstract Ingmar Bergman’s film Skammen [Shame] (1968), about a married couple trapped between the warring parties in a bloody civil war, triggered fierce ideological debate in Sweden. According to the harsh critics of the film, among whom the leading critic was well-known author Sara Lidman, Bergman had managed to create propaganda for the American government and its controversial war in Vietnam. In the present paper, the debate is studied historically in relation to ongoing research about the culture of the late 1960s in Sweden. The studied material consists of press clippings, Bergman scholarship, and Bergman’s own recently released papers at the Ingmar Bergman Foundation Archive in Stockholm. Furthermore, questions about meaning and interpretation regarding film viewing are dealt with, taking into consideration developments in contemporary film theory.

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Reciprocal Seeing and Embodied Subjectivity

10.1093/oso/9780198768913.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Cleo Hanaway-Oakley

Keyword(s):

Film Theory ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

Embodied Subjectivity ◽

Film Spectatorship ◽

Contemporary Film ◽

The Relationship ◽

Christian Metz

This chapter considers the previous ways in which literary scholars have used film theory in their interpretations of Ulysses. Joyce scholars have tended to favour the psychoanalytic film theories of Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, employing them in their analyses of the relationship between Gerty and Bloom in the ‘Nausicaa’ episode of Ulysses. Phenomenology is offered as an alternative approach, as a way of seeing beyond the seemingly rigid binaries of seer/seen, subject/object, absorptive/theatrical, and personal/impersonal. Starting from Merleau-Ponty’s ‘The Film and the New Psychology’ (1945), then moving on to consider the ideas of contemporary film phenomenologists (such as Vivian Sobchack, Spencer Shaw, and Jennifer Barker), the second half of the chapter outlines the insights provided by phenomenology, focusing on the reciprocity of cinematic perception and the embodied nature of film spectatorship.

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: Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory . Noel Carroll.

Film Quarterly ◽

10.1525/fq.1991.45.2.04a00100 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 49-51

Author(s):

Stephen Prince

Keyword(s):

Film Theory ◽

Contemporary Film

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Introduction

Cinema's Bodily Illusions ◽

10.5749/minnesota/9780816690961.003.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Scott C. Richmond

Keyword(s):

Film Theory ◽

Ecological Approach ◽

Contemporary Film

The introduction of Cinema's Bodily Illusions offers an overview of proprioceptive aesthetics as a problem in contemporary film and film theory. It lays out the problems of the book: proprioception and the ecological approach, the critique of modernism, and the technicity of the cinema.

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