Overview

"Although Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Jean Renoir do not pontificate about ""eternal verities or analytical niceties,"" as Irving Singer remarks in Three Philosophical Filmmakers, each expresses, through his work, his particular vision of reality. In this study of these great directors, Singer examines the ways in which meaning and technique interact within their different visions. Singer's account reveals Hitchcock, Welles and Renoir to be not only consummate artists and inspired craftsmen but also sophisticated theorists of film and its place in human experience. They left behind numerous essays, articles and interviews in which they discuss the nature of their own work as well as more extensive issues. Singer draws on their writings, as well as their movies, to show the pervasive importance of what they did as dedicated filmmakers. Hitchcock used his mastery of contrived devices not as mere formalism divorced from content, Singer notes, but in order to evoke emotional responses that are meaningful in themselves and that matter greatly to millions of people. Singer's discussion of Hitchcock's work analyses, among other things, his ideas about suspense, romance and the comic."

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It is a lively pleasure to read Irving Singer's concrete and minutely attentive discussions of certain great films, and it is a privilege to follow him as he converses with the written or recorded words of three great directors, deriving from each a distinctive vision of reality. --Richard Wilbur, United States poet laureate, 1987-1988 Irving Singer's Three Philosophical Filmmakers is the kind of book which rarely gets written any more. Singer pushes aside the encrusted secondary literature which surrounds Hitchcock, Welles, and Renoir to engage with their works from a loving and knowing perspective. In the course of the book, he gives us a deeper appreciation of how these three men thought about and through the cinema. Some of what he has to say is certainly debatable--and that is part of this book's pleasure--because it comes from a lifetime of filmgoing rather than speaking through the borrowed authority of some theoretical grand master. Singer writes with an analytic eye and a conversational tone, showing how we must bring our minds and our hearts to bear on art that matters. Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies, MIT

Irving Singer's Three Philosophical Filmmakers is the kind of book which rarely gets written any more. Singer pushes aside the encrusted secondary literature which surrounds Hitchcock, Welles, and Renoir to engage with their works from a loving and knowing perspective. In the course of the book, he gives us a deeper appreciation of how these three men thought about and through the cinema. Some of what he has to say is certainly debatable--and that is part of this book's pleasure--because it comes from a lifetime of filmgoing rather than speaking through the borrowed authority of some theoretical grand master. Singer writes with an analytic eye and a conversational tone, showing how we must bring our minds and our hearts to bear on art that matters. --Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies, MIT

Author Information

Irving Singer was Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He was the author of the trilogies The Nature of Love and Meaning in Life, P hilosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up, Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas, all published by the MIT Press, and many other books.

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