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Geiger, Jeffrey & Rutsky, R. L. Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. New York: Norton, 2005. 960 pp. £19.99. ISBN 0–393–97983–0, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 1, JANUARY 2007, Pages 99–100, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cql140
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Extract
The editors offer a very useful casebook of 44 discrete critical essays on 44 very different films, presented as examples of how to approach film criticism. The book has a clear introduction, with a general but not overwhelming description of what students can expect to focus on when thinking about film analysis. The value of the individual essays, each by an expert in that specific cinema, is the insights offered not just into contrasting genres and styles but also into the diversity and range of implicit theoretical approaches. The 44 films are arranged chronologically, starting with the Lumières' Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895–97, France) and concluding with Almodóvar's All About My Mother (1999, Spain). The first nine films are from the silent era, and then we have an average of four films per decade, although there are seven films from the fifties and just three from the sixties. Sixteen films were made in English, whereas the others are all also available on DVD with subtitles. The films range from the best-known – Citizen Kane (1941, USA) or 8½ (1963, Italy) – to Panchali's Neepa Majumdar (1955, India), Sembene's Ceddo (1977, Senegal), Hark's Peking Opera Blues (1986) and Kiarostami's Close-up (1989, Iran). There is an index and a very useful thirteen-page glossary.
