Authors:
- Argues for more attention to be paid to the interpretation of individual films and for the value of such work
- Explores the history of four influential film journals
- Offers extended analysis The Graduate, Red Desert, Chinatown, and Memento
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Difference a Reading Makes: Interpretation as Absent Center
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Front Matter
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Watching the Detective: Readings
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book argues that the sustained interpretation of individual movies has, contrary to conventional wisdom, never been a major preoccupation of film studies—that, indeed, the field is marked by a dearth of effective, engaging, and enlightening critical analyses of single films. The book makes this case by surveying what has been written about four historically important and well-known movies (D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East, Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert), none of which has been the focus of sustained critical attention, and by exhaustively examining the kinds of work published in four influential film journals (Cinema Journal, Screen, Wide Angle, and Movie). The book goes on to argue for the value of the work of interpretation, illustrating this value through extended analyses of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Christopher Nolan’s Memento, both of which thematize interpretation. Novak demonstrates the causes and consequences of reading poorly and the importance of reading well.
Authors and Affiliations
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Le Moyne College, Syracuse, USA
Phillip Novak
About the author
Phillip Novak is Associate Professor in the English department and the Department of Communication and Film Studies at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York. He has published articles on both film and literature in PMLA, Criticism, Journal of Film and Video, and elsewhere.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Interpretation and Film Studies
Book Subtitle: Movie Made Meanings
Authors: Phillip Novak
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44739-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44738-0Published: 01 August 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44741-0Published: 02 August 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-44739-7Published: 31 July 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 252
Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour
Topics: Film Theory, Close Reading