Dudley Andrew

A remarkable continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories , this work focuses on the key concepts in film perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with a lucid introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving a sense of the interdependence of these concepts. show more By providing lively explanations of theories that involve perceptual psychology and structuralism, semiotics and psychoanalysis, hermeneutics and genre study, Andrew offers unique observations on these often obscure topics, allowing readers to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film--and of art. show less

A remarkable continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories , this work focuses on the key concepts in film perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with a lucid introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving a sense of the interdependence of these concepts. show more By providing lively explanations of theories that involve perceptual psychology and structuralism, semiotics and psychoanalysis, hermeneutics and genre study, Andrew offers unique observations on these often obscure topics, allowing readers to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film--and of art. show less

Certainly in some sense this volume is a sequel to The Major Film
Theories, for it begins in 1965, virtually where that earlier book left
off. Just as Jean Mitry was seen there as the culminating figure of the
classic era, so here he is situated at the outset of the modern era. Because
film theory has grown so institutionalized, taken up as it has been
in universities, promulgated in professional societies and at academic
conferences, advanced in dissertations and in specialized journals, it
seems show more proper to approach it through topics rather than through careers
of individuals. Of course this limits my discussion to those issues that
obsess our journals, conferences, and seminars. Maverick thinkers, some
perhaps of lasting importance, are perforce left unheard in such a survey
of recent trends. But I do not apologize for this, since more than
mere convenience has urged this strategy. It is my belief, argued
throughout this text in its method as well as in its propositions, that
film theory exists as a discourse among theorists and with films. Hence
I have gone straight to the noisiest corners of that discourse and have
sought to make sense of the yelling and the whispers overheard there.
Are the topic headings sufficient to circumscribe this babble of modern
theory? They are meant to be, and the reader is challenged to locate
significant omissions along the way. Within the discussion of each
topic, however, no pretense to completeness can be claimed. I present
the arguments that most disturb or inspire me, and whenever useful,
adduce enough background to situate a given film problem within its
proper intellectual tradition.
All this is properly antecedent to the book's barely submerged and
chief concern: to express, through a dialogue with the theories of the
day, my own views on each particular concept and, more ambitious
still, my own sense of the interdependence of these concepts. No doubt
my predilections are readily discernable to the critical reader of The
Major Film Theories, but there I struggled to let the figures I selected
betray their insights and conundrums on their own. The present volume,
for several reasons, is different. First, no names in today's theory
are printed quite so luminously as to compel deference to their ideas,
for this is genuinely an age of schools of thought more than of lone
geniuses. Second, history has yet to sanctify or excuse the discourse
of our era and everyone can feel freer with it than with the canonized
systems of the past, no matter how far we may think to have outstripped
them. Third, my own thoughts about film have matured exactly
during the era this book chronicles. This is the theory generated
in the institutions which have supported me, and I am happy as well
as obligated to take a forthright stance within it. Nor is it treacherous
to conclude, as I will, that the era of pure theory is over and that the
task before us consists in confronting film concepts not with logic or
with paradigms derived from other fields, but with exemplary films and
sequences of films. To claim, as I also will, that theory must be led in
some respects by criticism, history, and analysis, is an important theoretical
claim. In a current volume I try to make good on that claim
(Film in the Aura of Art, Princeton University Press, 1984).
Obviously the honesty as well as utility of this book is imperiled by
a number of factors: an admittedly incomplete survey of the available
positions, the tendentious way this survey conforms to my view, and
the absence in this text of the kind of film analysis called for by the
argument. Enter the Classified Bibliography. Great care has been taken
to select enough citations relevant to each chapter to permit the responsible
enthusiast to pursue the arguments initiated in this text far
beyond the limited and parochial attention they receive in a book of
this size.
While many items in the Bibliography may challenge my position,
I look upon the Bibliography in toto as an ally. For I will be satisfied
when any reader, stimulated by the arguments presented here, or by
my personal assessment of those arguments, or even by the enticing
titles in the Bibliography, recognizes that the concepts isolated in this
book are anything but isolated, and can begin to see them as part of the history of ideas, as part of contemporary intellectual life, as part
of an overarching view I am indirectly tracing, or, most important, as
part of the questioning of the medium that goes on within the work of
films themselves. I will be satisfied, I say, because the discourse initiated
in such recognitions is one with the discourse of this book. It is
in fact the very discourse we label "Film Theory." show less

The treatment is my favorite part of this; clearly, I prefer prose to drama by a margin of approximately 244 percent.