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Doctor Zhivago Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather Kinetoscope
Why do movie theatres serve popcorn?
Seven Samurai King Kong Orson Welles: Citizen Kane Lady in the Lake Stagecoach Raging Bull
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Motion-picture projector.
motion picture summary
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film: References & Edit History

Additional Reading

There are numerous primers to film study, but the best systematic introductions are David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, 2nd ed. (1986); Louis Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 9th ed. (2002); and Bruce F. Kawin, How Movies Work (1987). The essential and classic books concerned with the nature of film include the following: Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense (1947), and Film Form (1949), two essays in film theory, translated from Russian and available in various later editions of the author’s theoretical essays; Béla Balázs, Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art (1952, reprinted 1972; originally published in Hungarian, 1948); Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (1957, reprinted 1971; originally published in German, 1932); Siegfried Kracauer, Nature of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1961, reissued as Theory of Film, 1974); André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, 2 vol., trans. from French (1967–71); Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916; reissued as The Film, a Psychological Study: The Silent Photoplay in 1916, 1970); Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, new ed. (1972); Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (1974; originally published in French, 1968), and The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (1982; originally published in French, 1977); and Nöel Burch, Theory of Film Practice (1973, reissued 1981; originally published in French, 1969). Of these Bazin and Eisenstein have proved to be the most fertile and lasting. An overview of classic theories can be found in J. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (1976), while his Concepts in Film Theory (1984) presents more-recent theories.

Several anthologies of essays stemming from the academic era of film study put the reader in touch with issues such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, ideology, and structuralism as they influence the cinema. See Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 3rd ed. (1985); Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods: An Anthology, 2 vol. (1976–85); and Philip Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: Film Theory Reader (1986). Individual theories have been advanced in David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (1985); Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (1981); Bruce F. Kawin, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film (1978); and Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (1984). The most thorough study of experimental cinema remains P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 2nd ed. (1979).

Dudley Andrew

Article Contributors

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Other Encyclopedia Britannica Contributors

Article History

Type Description Contributor Date
Add new Web site: University of Arkansas Oprn Textbooks - Moving Pictures - A Brief History of Cinema. Oct 25, 2024
Add new Web site: Library of Congress - Origins of Motion Pictures. Sep 09, 2024
Links added. Aug 18, 2023
Add new Web site: University of Minnesota Libraries - The History of Movies. Jul 07, 2023
Links added. Feb 10, 2023
Links added. Feb 01, 2023
Media added. Jan 03, 2023
Add new Web site: Science+Media Museum - A very short history of cinema. Nov 11, 2022
Add new Web site: PBS - American Experience - The Early History of Motion Pictures. Apr 25, 2022
Top Questions updated. Feb 03, 2022
Article revised and updated. Nov 19, 2020
Corrected display issue. Mar 24, 2020
Add new Web site: Engineering and Technology History Wiki - Motion Pictures. Jan 25, 2019
Add new Web site: UNESCO-EOLSS - Motion Pictures. Jul 06, 2018
Media added. Aug 16, 2017
Media added. Jul 08, 2010
Date of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari updated from 1919 to 1920. Jun 10, 2010
Media added. Aug 20, 2009
Article thoroughly revised. Aug 20, 2009
Added new Web site: Official Site of Film Street. Jan 21, 2009
Added new Web site: ThinkQuest - European cinema in 1910-1920s. Oct 16, 2008
Added new Web site: How Stuff Works - Entertainment - How Movie Producers Work. Oct 16, 2008
Added new Web site: Library of Congress - Research Guides - Bob Hop - A Lifetime of Entertainment. Apr 18, 2008
Added new Web site: Digital History - Chronology of Film History. Dec 04, 2007
Added new Web site: Internet and Multimedia Studies - The Movie Industry. Dec 04, 2007
Added new Web site: Separate Cinema - The Art of Black Film. Dec 28, 2006
Added new Web site: Separate Cinema - The Art of Black Film. Dec 28, 2006
Added new Web site: The Internet Movie Database. Nov 16, 2006
Added new Web site: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nov 16, 2006
Added new Web site: BFI - British Film Institute. Nov 16, 2006
Added new Web site: Official Site American Film Institute. Nov 16, 2006
Added new Web site: Annenberg Media - Cinema. Sep 12, 2006
Added new Web site: American Studies at the University of Virginia - Some Enchanted Evenings: American Picture Palaces. Jun 28, 2006
Added new Web site: American Studies at the University of Virginia - Some Enchanted Evenings: American Picture Palaces. Jun 28, 2006
Added new Web site: Reel Classics. May 15, 2006
Added new Web site: LoveHKFilm.com. May 11, 2006
Article revised. Dec 31, 2003
Article revised. May 17, 2002
Article added to new online database. Aug 23, 1998
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