The 'I' of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Originally published in 1988, The "I" of the Camera has become a classic in the literature of film. This second edition includes fourteen new essays, as well as a new foreword. Offering alternatives to the viewing and criticism of film, William Rothman challenges readers to think about film in adventurous ways that are more open to our experience of movies. In explaining the "American" quality of American film, Rothman argues compellingly that movies have inherited the philosophical perspective of American transcendentalism. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-36048-X First Edition Pb (1988): 0-521-36828-6 Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title 7 Copyright 8 Dedication 9 Contents 11 Foreword to the Second Edition 13 Preface to the First Edition 21 Acknowledgments 29 Notes on the Essays 31 CHAPTER 1 Hollywood Reconsidered: Reflections on the Classical American Cinema 37 CHAPTER 2 D. W. Griffith and the Birth of the Movies 47 CHAPTER 3 Judith of Bethulia 53 CHAPTER 4 True Heart Griffith 65 CHAPTER 5 The Ending of City Lights 80 CHAPTER 6 The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West 91 CHAPTER 7 Red Dust: The Erotic Screen Image 103 CHAPTER 8 Virtue and Villainy in the Face of the Camera 110 CHAPTER 9 Pathos and Transfiguration in the Face of the Camera: A Reading of Stella Dallas 123 CHAPTER 10 Viewing the World in Black and White: Race and the Melodrama of the Unknown Woman 132 Now, Voyager 132 Stella Dallas 134 Blonde Venus 136 Show Boat 138 Imitation of Life 140 CHAPTER 11 Howard Hawks and Bringing Up Baby 146 CHAPTER 12 The Filmmaker in the Film: Octave and the Rules of Renoir’s Game 158 Octave’s Role 158 Renoir’s Game 165 CHAPTER 13 Stagecoach and the Quest for Selfhood 175 The Initial Encounter 184 The Encounter at the Way Station 187 The Final Encounter 191 CHAPTER 14 To Have and Have Not Adapted a Film from a Novel 194 Neutral Traces of the Process of Adaptation 195 Action Lifted Bodily from Novel to Film 196 The Character of Harry Morgan 196 The Romance 197 Plot Design 198 Theme 198 Narrative Technique 199 CHAPTER 15 Hollywood and the Rise of Suburbia 203 CHAPTER 16 Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder and the Postwar American Cinema 213 Double Indemnity 216 Sunset Boulevard 221 Some Like It Hot 224 The Apartment 229 CHAPTER 17 The River 242 CHAPTER 18 Vertigo: The Unknown Woman in Hitchcock 257 CHAPTER 19 North by Northwest: Hitchcock’s Monument to the Hitchcock Film 277 Cary Grant 279 Eve Kendall 281 The Villains 288 CHAPTER 20 The Villain in Hitchcock: “Does He Look Like a ‘Wrong One’ to You?” 290 CHAPTER 21 Thoughts on Hitchcock’s Authorship 299 CHAPTER 22 Eternal Vérités: Cinema-Vérité and Classical Cinema 317 CHAPTER 23 Visconti’s Death in Venice 334 CHAPTER 24 Alfred Guzzetti’s Family Portrait Sittings 340 CHAPTER 25 A Taste for Beauty: Eric Rohmer’s Writings on Film 357 CHAPTER 26 Tale of Winter: Philosophical Thought in the Films of Eric Rohmer 361 CHAPTER 27 The “New Latin American Cinema” 376 CHAPTER 28 Violence and Film 384 CHAPTER 29 What Is American about American Film Study? 394 Index 417 The 'I' of the Camera has become a classic in the literature of film. Offering alternatives to the viewing and criticism of film, William Rothman challenges readers to think about film in adventurous ways that are more open to movies and our experience of them. In a series of eloquent essays examining particular films, filmmakers, genres and movements, and the 'Americanness' of American film, Rothman argues compellingly that movies have inherited the philosophical perspective of American transcendentalism. This second edition contains all of the essays that made the book a benchmark of film criticism. It also includes fourteen essays, written subsequent to the book's original publication, as well as a new foreword. The new chapters further broaden the scope of the volume, fleshing out its vision of film history and illuminating the author's critical method and the philosophical perspective that informs it America's experience of film is virtually unique in that in almost every other country, the impact of film cannot be separated from the process or at least the specter of Americanization.