Cinema and Modernity - by Murray Pomerance (Paperback)

About the Book

In Cinema and Modernity, Murray Pomerance brings together new essays by seventeen leading scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. Among the many films considered are Detour, Shock Corridor, The Last Laugh, and Experiment in Terror.

Book Synopsis

The modern impulse gave us captivating technology and dark anxiety, rampant mobility and a world filled with strangers, the futuristic city and a fragmentation of experience. Motion pictures--the quintessence of modernism--entered into this cultural, technical, and philosophical richness with a vast public appeal and a jarring new vision of what life could be.

In Cinema and Modernity, Murray Pomerance brings together new essays by seventeen leading scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. Among the many films considered are Detour, Shock Corridor, The Last Laugh, Experiment in Terror, The Great Dictator, Leave Her to Heaven, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Eyes Wide Shut, Sunrise, The Crowd, The Shape of Things to Come, The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Scarlet Street, Shadow of a Doubt, Stella Dallas, The Blue Angel, Sullivan's Travels, and Catch Me If You Can.

Review Quotes

I can think of no topic more central to Film Studies than 'Cinema and Modernity.' Facet after facet of both terms gleam when rotated in the intermittent light of this fascinating anthology.--Dudley Andrew "Professor of Film Studies and Comparative Literature, Yale University"

This book amply confirms cinema's continuing vitality in the modern world. Pomerance and his authors impressively situate cinematic modernity in technology, cartography, and linguistic practice; in architectures of power, narratives of resistance, and instabilities of knowledge. I can't imagine a film scholar who would not find something of value in this rich anthology.--Scott Bukatman "author of Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century "

About the Author

MURRAY POMERANCE is a professor and chair in the sociology department at Ryerson University in Toronto. He is the coeditor of the Screen Decades series and the author of numerous books, including Johnny Depp Starts Here and An Eye for Hitchcock.