Film as Art - Softcover

Arnheim, Rudolf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520000358 ISBN 13: 9780520000353

Publisher: University of California Press, 1957

Synopsis

This is a book of standards, a theory of film. The greater part of it is an adaptation of "Film als Kunst, " first published in 1932 in the original German and in English by Faber and Faber in 1933 - an edition long out of print but still in demand because it raises fundamental questions that the intervening years have by no means answered.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"More than half a century since its initial publication, this deceptively compact book remains among the most incisive analyses of the formal and perceptual dynamics of cinema. No one who cares about film can afford to remain ignorant of its insights and wisdom. As digital technology fundamentally alters motion pictures, the lessons of Film as Art commend themselves as excellent insurance against reinventing the wheel in the new media landscape and hailing it as progress."--Edward Dimendberg author of "Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity
"After more than eight decades, Rudolph Arnheim's small book of film theory remains one of the essential works in defining film art, understanding film less as reproducing the world than as opening up new possibilities for formal play and unexpected imagery. Anyone serious about film, whether scholar, filmmaker or simply a lover of cinema, must take Arnheim seriously."--Tom Gunning, author of "The Films of Fritz Lang (2000) and "D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (1994)
"An aesthetic theory based on the formal 'limitations' of the medium, Arnheim's "Film as Art always provokes students in an age of few limits and less formality, and they argue and engage this classic text with unparalleled passion. Written in the wake of sound's transformation of the cinema, Arnheim's essays are not only central to understanding a major historical moment in theoretical debates about what constitutes the 'essence' of film, but also are a must read for anyone seeking a lucid, detailed, and rigorous argument about how works of art emerge from expressive constraint as much as expressive freedom."--Vivian Sobchack, author of "Carnal Thoughts(California, 2004) and many other books of film criticism.

About the Author

Rudolf Arnheim is Professor Emeritus of the Psychology of Art at Harvard University. For many years he was a member of the Psychology Faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, and he spent his last ten academic years at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he now lives.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1957
• ISBN 10: 0520000358
• ISBN 13: 9780520000353
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240