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Title: How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia: Language, History, Theory by James Monaco ISBN: 0-19-503869-X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Or, how to ethically use a film in this Information Age
Comment: James Monaco states early on if that poetry is something one can't translate, and if art is something one can't define, then film is something that can't be explained. He tries to in this book. Film is shaped by politics, philosophy, economics and the technology of a society, with that last being more a key factor with the digital revolution. How To Read A Film-Movies, Media, Multimedia is more than just a book on film technique, history, and theory. It's that last word in the title that is given emphasis on in the last section, including the emphasis that the book is also about How To USE a Film.
Techniques are covered include lighting, aspect ratio, tracks, film grade, and codes. And yes, there is the requisite film history, which is heavily condensed and goes through individual directors, countries, and certain genres in film. As only one chapter's devoted to it, but it's a quick cram-course in who's who, who-directed-what?, who-starred-in-what?, and what was going on in such-and-such a country.
Another interesting concept is the terms film, cinema, and movies. The terms are defined in the way we look at the medium. Film is what it's called in relationship to the world, i.e. politics. Cinema refers to a more aesthetic and intellectual stance. And movie is a named when defined as a consumer-oriented, economic commodity. The terminology is interesting when one defines a performance as the sum of the actor's persona in conflict with the role he plays.
Monaco then spends some time discussing the two schools, expressionism/formalism versus neorealism/functionalism. Expressionism, derived in Germany from such masters as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, focuses on the inner aspect of humanity, using symbols, stereotypes, stylization, which eventually influenced directors such as Hitchcock and Welles. Formalism, more from the Soviet masters like Sergei Eisenstein, is more analytic and scientific, concerned with technique. There are discussions of montage (series of shots that advance the action) vs. mis-en-scene (deep focus photography that allows more audience participation in the film experience) and the schools of thought that argued in favour of one over the other. There's an interesting observation by Andre Bazin, who saw film as the asymptote to reality, the imaginary line that nears but never touches reality, which if put into conjunction into the earlier definition of film being something that can't be explained.
All this leds to multimedia and virtual reality. Most of the latter deals with the information age, detailing the history of computers and Internet, which led to the control and access to information. This ties in with the ethics regarding copyright in the merging of texts, images and sound, and downloading MP3's in this postmodernist, recontextualization of art, where film sits squarely. Doesn't this surely affect burning DVD's from the Net, which serves to accelerate already shrinking box office takings? Monaco quotes Lenin on how ethics is the esthetics of the future, sums this dilemma up pretty well.
Monaco uses the example of David Bowman, the astronaut in 2001, and the virtual cage he's in at the end of the movie, to describe how our closed personalized environments, created to block out the noisy outside world, may give us security, i.e. Discmans, cellphones, VCR viewings as opposed to theatrical outings, but at the cost of losing touch visually and morally from our surroundings. Invaluable due to its being not only about the past of film, but its future as well.
Rating: 2
Summary: misleading title
Comment: The title is misleading. The book does not help you to understand a film. It just sketches the history of films and film theories. I am a novice to the field and had hoped to get a better understanding of films, but was disappointed.
Rating: 4
Summary: Misleading title
Comment: While not as concentrated, pragmatic, or reader-friendly as the title might suggest, Monaco's book is still the best comprehensive one-volume introduction to the aesthetics, politics, economics, theory, phenomenology, and industry of film. It's best seen as complementary to more basic introductory texts and detailed histories. Readers with a theoretical bent are most likely to appreciate its unique strengths.
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Title: Understanding Movies (9th Edition) by Louis Giannetti ISBN: 0130408131 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 21 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $64.00 |
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Title: The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (Galaxy Book ; Gb450) by Dudley Andrew, James Dudley Andrew ISBN: 0195019911 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 1976 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Short Guide to Writing about Film (4th Edition) by Timothy Corrigan ISBN: 0321081145 Publisher: Pearson Longman Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $33.20 |
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Title: Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age by Michael Barrier ISBN: 0195167295 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: An Introduction to Film Studies by Jill Nelmes ISBN: 0415173108 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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