Highlights
Comprehensive Coverage
A History of Narrative Film treats "every imaginable aspect of film."
- Important Filmmakers—includes all major directors from cinema’s beginnings to the present—from D. W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, and John Ford to Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jane Campion.
- International Scope—discusses the major movements in international cinema, including Expressionism, film noir, das neue Kino, the French "New Wave," and Dogme95, and covers a wider range of national cinemas than other books.
- Analytical Depth—provides sophisticated analysis of the monumental touchstones of world cinema, among them The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, October, Citizen Kane, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Solid, Current Scholarship
Both an outstanding textbook and a trusted reference, A History of Narrative Film contains up-to-date filmographies, a thorough bibliography, an extensive index, and a complete glossary of cinematic terms, making it the best resource for serious students of film history.
Cultural and Historical Contexts
A History of Narrative Film, Fourth Edition, analyzes specific films, directors, and trends within broad cultural and historical contexts, discussing, for example, the following:
- the relationship between Soviet montage and Marxist dialectic
- the social context surrounding D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation
- Hollywood during and after the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigations
- Nazi Germany and cinematic propaganda
- student uprisings in France in 1968 and the emergence of the "New Wave"
- the Vietnam War and the portrayal of violence in 1970s cinema
- the dawn of the personal computer and its impact on film’s production, distribution, and consumption
- the economics of filmmaking
New Chapter on CGI
Chapter 21, "Hollywood Enters the Digital Domain," offers a thorough and fascinating account of the origins and development of computer-generated imaging and its implications for the future of filmmaking.
A New Look
Completely redesigned, A History of Narrative Film, Fourth Edition, now offers a more readable two-column page design and larger, more pedagogically informed illustrations.
Copyright © 2005, W. W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved.
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