Murray Pomerance

The Film Cheat (eBook, ePUB)

Screen Artifice and Viewing Pleasure

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Murray Pomerance, venerated film scholar, is the first to take on the 'cheat' in film, where 'cheating' constitutes a collection of production, performance, and structuring maneuvers intended to foster the impression of a screen reality that does not exist as presented. This usually calls for a suspension of disbelief in the viewer, but that rests on the assumption that disbelief is problematic for viewership, and that we must find some way to "suspend" or "disconnect" it in order to allow for the entertainment of the fiction in its own terms.

The Film Cheat explores forty-five aspects of the 'cheat,' analyzing classic films such as Singin' in the Rain and Chinatown, to more contemporary films like The Revenant and Baby Driver, with Pomerance engaging his encyclopedic knowledge of film history to point out numerous instances of suspensions of disbeliefs. Whether or not Gene Kelly is actually dancin' in the rain, or if Elliott is really flying on his bicycle carrying E.T., these cheats are what make movie magic.

Elegantly weaving the narrative for one to dip into at random or to read from cover to cover, Pomerance turns things upside down so that the audience actually finds pleasure in the cheat itself, pleasure in the disbelief. To see the elegant fake, the supremely accomplished simulacrum is a pleasure in its own right, indeed one of the fundamental pleasures of cinema.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
• Seitenzahl: 384
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Oktober 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781501364976
• Artikelnr.: 60506141

Autorenporträt

Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto, Canada, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Hitchcock Quartet (An Eye for Hitchcock, A Dream of Hitchcock, A Voyage with Hitchcock, and A Silence from Hitchcock); Uncanny Cinema: Agonies of the Viewing Experience (Bloomsbury, 2022); Color It True: Impressions of Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022); The Film Cheat: Film Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (Bloomsbury, 2020); Virtuoso: Film Performance and the Actor's Magic (Bloomsbury, 2019); Cinema, If You Please: The Memory of Taste, the Taste of Memory (Bloomsbury, 2018), and many other volumes including, with Matthew Solomon, The Biggest Thing in Show Business: Living It Up with Martin & Lewis (2024). Pomerance's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, New Directions, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere; he is the author of Grammatical Dreams, A King of Infinite Space, and other books.

Inhaltsangabe

Preamble: The Viewer as "Mark" Of Scripts 1. Yesterdays 2. Tomorrow and
Tomorrow and Tomorrow 3. Narrative Transparency 4. The Cheating Cut 5.
Narrative Opacity 6. The Narrator Hides 7. Taxi Cheat 8. And Here Endeth my
Tale 9. Only Pretending 10. Keeping Minutes Of Performing 11. Monster! 12.
A Star, Not a Star 13. Pain 14. Measuring Up 15. Privacy 16. Signed 17.
Keyed Up 18. Don't Believe It 19. "I Love You" 20. Surrender Of Cameras
21. Corral 22. Show Me 23. On the Road 24. "Good Cinematography" 25. "Look
at the Picture" 26. Peek-a-Boo 27. Moving On 28. Behind the Camera Behind
29. All the Way Not to Holland Of Scenes 30. No There There 31. Where are
We? 32. Walk on the Wild Side 33. Happy Trails 34. The Thing 35. Heist 36.
The Reality Effect 37. Stand-ins 38. A Superheroic Universe Of Cuts 39.
Believe in Me 40. Over Thames 41. Something is Happening 42. Veni creator
spiritus 43. "Bite the Dust" 44. Reflect on That 45. Presence and
Presentation 46. By Contrast 47. The Blood Effect 48. Our Cheating Heart:
Not an Introduction Bibliography Index