Kristin Thompson

David Bordwell

Film is an art form with a language and an aesthetic all its own. In this new edition, the authors provide an introduction to the fundamentals of serious film study, with images throughout the text collected from actual film frames, not from production stills or advertising photos.

An Introduction

Film Art

an introduction

Film history

Janet Staiger

An overview of American studio filmmaking that examines its distinct mode of film practice, in both production and style, from 1917 through 1960.

Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960

The Classical Hollywood Cinema

Professor Kristin Thompson

Drawing on a wide range of films from the 1920s to the 1990s--from Keaton's Our Hospitality to Casablanca to Terminator 2, Kristin Thompson offers the first in-depth analysis of Hollywood's storytelling techniques and how they are used to make complex, easily comprehensible, entertaining films.

Understanding Classical Narrative Technique

Storytelling in the New Hollywood

Film Viewer's Guide

The secret of television's success may well lie in the remarkable narrative complexities underlying its seeming simplicity, complexities Kristin Thompson unmasks in this analysis of the narrative workings of television and film.

Storytelling in Film and Television

"Classical works have for us become covered with the glassy armor of familiarity," wrote Victor Shklovsky in 1914. Here Kristin Thompson "defamiliarizes" the reader with eleven different films. Developing the technique formulated in her Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (Princeton, 1981), she clearly demonstrates the flexibility of the neoformalist approach. She argues that critics often use cut-and-dried methods and choose films that easily fit those methods. Neoformalism, on the other hand, encourages the critic to deal with each film differently and to modify his or her analytical assumptions continually. Thompson's analyses are thus refreshingly varied and revealing, ranging from an ordinary Hollywood film, Terror by Night, to such masterpieces as Late Spring and Lancelot du Lac. She proposes a formal historical way of dealing with realism, using Bicycle Thieves and The Rules of the Game as examples. Stage Fright and Laura provide cases in which the classical cinema defamiliarizes its own conventions by playing with audience expectations. Other chapters deal with Tati's Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and Play Time and Godard's Tout va bien and Sauve qui peut (la vie). Although neoformalist analysis is a rigorous, distinctive approach, it avoids extensive specialized vocabulary and esoteric concepts: the essays here can be read separately by those interested in the individual films. The book's overall purpose, however, goes beyond making these particular films more accessible and intriguing to propose new ways of looking at cinema as a whole.

Neoformalist Film Analysis

Breaking the Glass Armor

Storia del cinema e dei film

America in the World Film Market, 1907-34

Exporting Entertainment

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are two of America’s preeminent film scholars. You would be hard pressed to find a serious student of the cinema who hasn’t spent at least a few hours huddled with their seminal introduction to the field—Film Art, now in its ninth edition—or a cable television junkie unaware that the Independent Film Channel sagely christened them the “Critics of the Naughts.” Since launching their blog Observations on Film Art in 2006, the two have added web virtuosos to their growing list of accolades, pitching unconventional long-form pieces engaged with film artistry that have helped to redefine cinematic storytelling for a new age and audience. Minding Movies presents a selection from over three hundred essays on genre movies, art films, animation, and the business of Hollywood that have graced Bordwell and Thompson’s blog. Informal pieces, conversational in tone but grounded in three decades of authoritative research, the essays gathered here range from in-depth analyses of individual films such as Slumdog Millionaire and Inglourious Basterds to adjustments of Hollywood media claims and forays into cinematic humor. For Bordwell and Thompson, the most fruitful place to begin is how movies are made, how they work, and how they work on us. Written for film lovers, these essays—on topics ranging from Borat to blockbusters and back again—will delight current fans and gain new enthusiasts. Serious but not solemn, vibrantly informative without condescension, and above all illuminating reading, Minding Movies offers ideas sure to set film lovers thinking—and keep them returning to the silver screen.

Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking

Minding Movies

This book introduce the history of film as it is presently conceived, written, and taught by its most accomplished scholars. However, this book is not a distillation of everything that is known about film history.

Film History: An Introduction

Systématique, l'ouvrage donne au lecteur les bases théoriques, techniques et historiques en suivant six grands axes. Comment crée-t-on un film ? Comment fonctionne un film et qu'est-ce que la forme filmique ? Quelles sont les possibilités offertes par la mise en scène, la prise de vue, le montage et le son et comment ces techniques contribuent- elles à la forme filmique ? Quels sont les principaux types et genres cinématographiques ? Comment faire l'analyse critique d'un film ? Quelles sont les grandes étapes de l'histoire du cinéma ? Le propos s'appuie sur des analyses précises de séquences empruntées à toute l'histoire du cinéma, illustrées par plus de 1200 photogrammes directement tirés des films. Un glossaire, un triple index (notions, noms, titres) et une vaste bibliographie complètent cet ensemble. David Bordwell et Kristin Thompson, par ailleurs auteurs - et autorités - reconnus de nombreux travaux de recherches dans le champ des études cinématographiques, signent ici la 10e édition de ce livre de référence.

Une introduction

L'art du film

Stephen Heath

Thomas Austin

Teresa De Lauretis

Implications of the Cel Animation Technique

The first study by an acclaimed American scholar of the artistic interdependencies between the German and the Hollywood cinema in the 1920s.

German and American Film After World War I

Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood

This is a fascinating behind-the-scenes book about The Lord of the Rings as a contemporary cinema phenomenon. Compiled by a leading American film academic, it is the fullest possible inside story - of the planning for the movie, the corporate battles, the struggle to get the movie made, the creative genius of Peter Jackson, the special effects and digital breakthroughs, the massive promotion, in particular the radically new use of the Internet - and the millions of dollars the movies cost, and then made, at the box office. The Lord of the Rings took NZ by storm, and there are detailed chapters about this set in NZ. But it also took Hollywood by storm, forcing the rewriting of some of Hollywood's basic rules about how you make and sell a blockbuster. It is now a benchmark against which all other films are measured.

How the Lord of the Rings Became a Hollywood Blockbuster & Put New Zealand on the Map

The Frodo Franchise

Or, Le Mot Juste

Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes

"This is the best all-around view of the Tolkien phenomenon. Thompson understands the books, she understands the movies—she also understands the money and the franchising. Best of all, she understands the people. Thompson offers cultural criticism of the highest order, examining one of the most significant shifts in contemporary popular media."—Tom Shippey, author of The Road to Middle-earth "Reading these chapters has been an absolute pleasure. It’s all so complex but so succinct. Thompson has managed to do what so many others have failed to do . . . in chapter one, she has explained how all the rights to LOTR bounced around, and were finally sorted so Peter Jackson could make the movie. I’ve never understood the complexities of how that worked until now!"—Judy Alley, Merchandising Coordinator, The Lord of the Rings "I must say that Thompson has written the definitive study of Peter Jackson’s work in creating this remarkable production entity."—Alex Funke, ASC, Oscar-winning Visual Effects Director of Photography, miniatures unit, The Lord of the Rings "I had a wonderful time reading those chapters! There’s so much I don’t know about what went on—I am in awe of all the research Thompson has done. It is an extremely interesting read! There’s so much there that I’d forgotten and I always wished there was a permanent record of many things that happened. Thompson’s account of TORN’s beginnings and how it functioned gets it absolutely right—more than that, Thompson captures how it felt to us at the time. Nobody else has managed to get enough of an understanding to do that."—Erica Challis ("Tehanu"), co-founder of TheOneRing.net

Kristin Thompson

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