The Face on Film

Awards:   Winner of Winner of the Limina Prize 2017 for Best International Film Studies Book 2018 Honorary Mention from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Winner of Winner of the Limina Prize 2017 for Best International Film Studies Book.
Author:   Noa Steimatsky (Visiting Associate Professor of Italian Studies, Visiting Associate Professor of Italian Studies, University of California-Berkeley)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN:  

9780199863167


Pages:   296
Publication Date:   09 March 2017
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Our Price $141.95 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

The Face on Film


Add your own review!

Awards

  • Winner of Winner of the Limina Prize 2017 for Best International Film Studies Book 2018 Honorary Mention from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
  • Winner of Winner of the Limina Prize 2017 for Best International Film Studies Book.

Overview

The human face was said to be rediscovered with the advent of motion pictures, in which it is often viewed as expressive locus, as figure, and even as essence of the cinema. But how has the modern, technological, mass-circulating art revealed the face in ways that are also distinct from any other medium? How has it altered our perception of this quintessential incarnation of the person? The archaic powers of masks and icons, the fashioning of the individual in the humanist portrait, the modernist anxieties of fragmentation and de-figuration--these are among the cultural precedents informing our experience in the movie theatre. Yet the moving image also offers radical new confrontations with the face: Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, Donen's Funny Face, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man, Bresson's enigmatic Au hasard Balthazar, Antonioni's Screen Test, Warhol's filmic portraits of celebrity and anonymity are among the key works explored in this book. In different ways these intense encounters manifest a desire for transparency and plenitude, but--especially in post-classical cinema--they also betray a profound ambiguity that haunts the human countenance as it wavers between image and language, between what we see and what we know. The spectacular impact of the cinematic face is uncannily bound up with an opacity, a reticence. But is it not for this very reason that, like faces in the world, it still enthralls us?

Full Product Details

Author:   Noa Steimatsky (Visiting Associate Professor of Italian Studies, Visiting Associate Professor of Italian Studies, University of California-Berkeley)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 25.10cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 17.80cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9780199863167


ISBN 10:   0199863164
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   09 March 2017
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments Preface: Face Moving Image A Dispositif An Ur-Image The Face Against the Image Itineraries Chapter One: We Had Faces Then Expressivity in the 1920s Joan of Arc, Inevitably The Face and its Voices Glamour/Anti-Glamour Chapter Two: Roland Barthes Looks at the Stars Toward ""Visages et figures"" Excursus on the Face in Language Into the Movie Theater Ultra-Face Excursus on the Mask From Cult to Charm: Funny Face Chapter Three: Face-to-Face (with The Wrong Man) What Godard Saw What the Clerk Saw Excursus on Anthropometrics Not a Mirror, Not a Lamp Chapter Four: Pass/Fail: Screen Test, Apparatus, Subject The Antonioni Screen Test Excursus on a Star Portrait Sitting for the Portrait is the Portrait Outer and Inner Space, and the Pathos of Time Fail Better Chapter Five: In Reticence (Bresson) The Epidermal and the Written The Image Against the Face Not an Open Book, but a Door Ajar Postface: The Two-Shot"

Reviews

Noa Steimatsky's intricate prose flows like blood through the capillaries of <em>The Face on Film</em> making its subject throb, blush, and sometimes turn pallid. Her study will be one of a handful to last as long as the filmmakers she so precisely, lovingly, longingly treats: Dreyer, Hitchcock, Antonioni, Warhol, Bresson. Without blinking, and without hesitating, Steimatsky confronts and describes-draws and draws out-the experience of the face as well as of film. --DUDLEY ANDREW, Yale University <em>The Face on Film</em> is a brilliant meditation on the historical importance of the face both inside and outside the cinema and the way questions of its signification and efficacy have been exacerbated in modernity and late modernity. Detailed and elegant readings of films buttress Steimatsky's compelling argument that the opacity or illegibility of the face always accompanies and subtends its legibility. She directly addresses the question of our enduring cultural obsession with this enigmatic yet central site linked to identity, expressivity, singularity and contingency. Vigorous, intelligent and lucid, this work will surely have a strong impact on current debates about aesthetics and ethics. --MARY ANN DOANE, University of California - Berkeley With this powerful book, Noa Steimatsky emerges as one of our profoundest observers of the possibilities of the medium of film. <em>The Face on Film</em> both caresses the surface and probes the profundities of the human face in cinema. Balancing a historical overview, examination of the long critical engagement with cinematic faces, and close analysis of carefully selected films, Steimatsky demonstrates the capacity of the face on film to both reveal and conceal meaning and emotion. -- TOM GUNNING, University of Chicago


Noa Steimatsky's intricate prose flows like blood through the capillaries of <em>The Face on Film</em> making its subject throb, blush, and sometimes turn pallid. Her study will be one of a handful to last as long as the filmmakers she so precisely, lovingly, longingly treats: Dreyer, Hitchcock, Antonioni, Warhol, Bresson. Without blinking, and without hesitating, Steimatsky confronts and describes-draws and draws out-the experience of the face as well as of film. -- <em>Dudley Andrew, Yale University</em> <em>The Face on Film</em> is a brilliant meditation on the historical importance of the face both inside and outside the cinema and the way questions of its signification and efficacy have been exacerbated in modernity and late modernity. Detailed and elegant readings of films buttress Steimatsky's compelling argument that the opacity or illegibility of the face always accompanies and subtends its legibility. She directly addresses the question of our enduring cultural obsession with this enigmatic yet central site linked to identity, expressivity, singularity and contingency. Vigorous, intelligent and lucid, this work will surely have a strong impact on current debates about aesthetics and ethics. -- <em>Mary Ann Doane, University of California - Berkeley</em> With this powerful book, Noa Steimatsky emerges as one of our profoundest observers of the possibilities of the medium of film. <em>The Face on Film</em> both caresses the surface and probes the profundities of the human face in cinema. Balancing a historical overview, examination of the long critical engagement with cinematic faces, and close analysis of carefully selected films, Steimatsky demonstrates the capacity of the face on film to both reveal and conceal meaning and emotion. -- <em>Tom Gunning, University of Chicago</em>


Author Information

Noa Steimatsky is a film scholar who lives and writes in San Francisco. She teaches at the University of California - Berkeley.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

Aorrng

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List