Editor: Peter Lehman
Subject: Film and Media
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2302-8
Pages: 224 pp.
Series: Rutgers Depth of Field
Description: The only book to combine essays by classical film theorists with essays about those theorists by contemporary film scholars.

Depth of Field Series, Charles Affron, Mirella Affron, and Robert Lyons, Editors

Defining Cinema brings together leading film theorists and scholars to discuss the importance of film theory to cinema studies. Peter Lehman introduces the volume by explaining what constitutes film theory and outlining the major positions within film theory by placing the theorists in this collection and their work within a historical perspective. André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer represent realist film theories, and Sergei Eisenstein represents a formalist position. Nöel Burch and Christian Metz are contemporary theorists who have moved beyond the classical realist-formalist opposition. Burch's theory encompasses films and styles praised by both Bazin and Eisenstein, and Metz helped bring semiotics and psychoanalytic theory to prominence in the field.

The commentaries by contemporary film scholars range from attacking to defending to explicating the various theorists. Dudley Andrew gives an impassioned defense of Bazin, while Nöel Carroll offers a sharp critique of Kracauer. Vance Kepley, Jr., explicates Eisenstein's theories in relationship to his films and shows the legacy of those films in film history. Edward Branigan analyzes Burch's early work in a manner that reveals its daring, rigor, and importance. Robert T. Eberwein traces the shift in Metz's work from the early phase based in linguistics and semiotics to the later work based in psychoanalytic theory. Taken together, the essays show that film theory is a lively area of inquiry and debate rather than a simple history of right and wrong positions.

PETER LEHMAN is a professor and director of graduate studies in media arts at the University of Arizona. He is the author of several books, including Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body, and editor of Close Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism.