Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film - Softcover

Williams, Linda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520078969 ISBN 13: 9780520078963

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

Linda Williams examines the theoretical and poetic writings of the Surrealists during the period from 1910 to 1930 and traces the emergence of a poetics of the cinematic image based upon the fluid associations of dreams and the unconscious. Incorporating both Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Metz's methodology on film and dream rhetoric, she analyzes the structure of unconscious desire in four key Surrealist films by Luis Buñuel: Un chien andalou and l'Âge d'or (both co-scripted by Salvador Dali) and Phantom of Liberty and That Obscure Object of Desire.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"An important contribution to film theory. . . . Williams has a fluid, assured style. She is clearly in command of the subject. She's made a strong and original argument for the psychoanalytic basis of Surrealism."—James Monaco, author of The New Wave

About the Author:

Linda Williams is Professor of Film Studies at The University of California, Irvine and the author of Hard Core (California, 1989).

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0520078969
• ISBN 13: 9780520078963
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 245