Watching

A respected British television critic analyzes the diverse ways we see moving images and the messages we take away.

As the century draws to a close and film emerges as our preeminent mode of cultural expression, it has become increasingly important to examine how this ubiquitous art form impacts upon its audience. Unlike reading, watching a movie is often a passive experience, rendering the audience unaware of how the film is affecting them.

In Watching, award-winning journalist Tom Sutcliffe takes some of the fundamental elements of film and explores their effect on our senses through an illuminating series of essays. The book opens with a discussion of the implicit contract cinema has with its audience--that unless explicitly told otherwise it is safe for viewers to trust the evidence of their eyes--and then goes on to examine such aspects as screen size, freeze-frame, opening shots, and even violence, and the underlying meaning they convey. With reference to both cinema history and contemporary culture, and a broad-ranging discussion of film that touches upon everything from Birth of a Nation to Citizen Kane to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sutcliffe produces a book about the pleasures of watching movies that is itself a pleasure to read.

Tom Sutcliffe is the parliamentary reporter for The Independent, where he has also served as arts editor and television critic. He was awarded Best Television Journalist of the Year by What the Papers Say in 1995.