Michel Chion's study of the film and television work of David Lynch has become, since its first English publication in 1995, the definitive book on one of America's finest contemporary directors. In this new edition Chion brings the book up-to-date to take into account Lynch's work in the past ten years, including the major features "Lost Highway, The Straight Story," and "Mulholland Drive. "Newly redesigned and re-illustrated, "David Lynch "is an indispensable companion.

Stanley Kubrick died on 7 March 1999 at his Hertfordshire home, having finished the editing of his last film. Eyes Wide Shut was released later that year. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 Viennese novel Dream Story, relocated and updated to contemporary Manhattan, Eyes Wide Shut stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a prosperous couple whose marriage is tested in the aftermath a series of sinister events. The film baffled many of its first audiences. It had all the lavish attention to detail of a Kubrick film but it seemed slow, enigmatic, too much of a dream. Michel Chion's extraordinary study of Eyes Wide Shut makes the case that it is one of Kubrick's masterpieces and a fitting testament. To appreciate this, though, it is necessary to look at what happens on the screen without bringing preconceptions to bear. The film needs to be taken at face value. Looked at this way, Eyes Wide Shut reveals itself to be a deeply moving film about characters who are not so different from real people, a film about life in which questions of meaning and motive lose their value.

First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chion's Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates "acousmatic" listening-listening without visual access to a sound's cause-to disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do.

First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chion's Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates "acousmatic" listening-listening without visual access to a sound's cause-to disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do.

Michel Chion's landmark Audio-Vision has exerted significant influence on our understanding of sound-image relations since its original publication in 1994. Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception. Sound in audiovisual media does not merely complement images. Instead, the two channels together engage audio-vision, a special mode of perception that transforms both seeing and hearing. We don't see images and hear sounds separately-we audio-view a trans-sensory whole. In this updated and expanded edition, Chion considers many additional examples from recent world cinema and formulates new questions for the contemporary media environment. He takes into account the evolving role of audio-vision in different theatrical environments, considering its significance for music videos, video art, commercial television, and the internet, as well as conventional cinema. Chion explores how multitrack digital sound enables astonishing detail, extending the space of the action and changing practices of scene construction. He demonstrates that speech is central to film and television and shows why "audio-logo-visual" is a more accurate term than "audiovisual." Audio-Vision shows us that sound is driving the creation of a sensory cinema. This edition includes a glossary of terms, a chronology of several hundred significant films, and the original foreword by sound designer, editor, and Oscar honoree Walter Murch.

How can a voice whose source is never seen--such as Norman Bates's mother in "Psycho" or Hal in "2001: A Space Odyssey"--have such a powerful hold over an audience? And how have such directors as Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock used "the being heard but not seen" to build suspense in films since the advent of "talkies" in 1927? In a brilliant exploration of a subject no one else has written on at any length, one of the foremost experts on film sound explores the mysterious power of the human voice-particularly the disembodied voice-as deployed in cinema. Michel Chion, author of "Audio-Vision," analyzes imaginative uses of the human voice by directors like Lang, Hitchcock, Ophuls, Duras, and de Palma. The first part of "The Cinematic Voice" considers the hidden, faceless voice and its magical powers, particularly as used in Fritz Lang's "Testament of Dr. Mabuse." Chion sees this film, produced at the dawn of the sound era, as a template for the voice in cinema. The middle section's five essays explore entrapment by telephone, voice-thieves, screams of terror, siren calls, and the silence of mute characters. Finally, Chion looks at "the monstrous marriage of the filmed voice and body" as figured in "Psycho's" Norman Bates. Claudia Gorbman's fluent translation introduces readers to Chion's sophisticated and accessible analysis in a work that established his reputation as a major voice in French film criticism.

Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other. The first section of the book examines film music in historical perspective, and the second section addresses the theoretical implications of the crossover between art forms. Chion discusses a vast variety of films across eras, genres, and continents, embracing all the different genres of music that filmmakers have used to tell their stories. Beginning with live accompaniment of silent films in early movie houses, the book analyzes Al Jolson's performance in The Jazz Singer, the zither in The Third Man, Godard's patchwork sound editing, the synthesizer welcoming the flying saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Kinshasa orchestra in Felicite, among many more. Chion considers both original scores and incorporation of preexisting works, including the use and reuse of particular composers across cinematic traditions, the introduction of popular music such as jazz and rock, and directors' attraction to atonal and dissonant music as well as musique concrete, of which he is a composer. Wide-ranging and original, Music in Cinema offers a welcoming overview for students and general readers as well as refreshingly new and valuable perspectives for film scholars.

French critic and composer Michel Chion argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise--it enacts a process of "audio-viewing." The audiovisual makes use of a wealth of tropes, devices, techniques, and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema.

The first half of "Film, A Sound Art" considers developments in technology, aesthetic trends, and individual artistic style that recast the history of film as the evolution of a truly audiovisual language. The second half explores the intersection of auditory and visual realms. With restless inventiveness, Chion develops a rhetoric that describes the effects of audio-visual combinations, forcing us to rethink sound film. He claims, for example, that the silent era (which he terms "deaf cinema") did not end with the advent of sound technology but continues to function underneath and within later films. Expanding our appreciation of cinematic experiences ranging from Dolby multitrack in action films and the eerie tricycle of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" to the way actors from different nations use their voices and words, "Film, A Sound Art" showcases the vast knowledge and innovative thinking of a major theorist.

Michel Chion's landmark Audio-Vision has exerted significant influence on our understanding of sound-image relations since its original publication in 1994. Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception. Sound in audiovisual media does not merely complement images. Instead, the two channels together engage audio-vision, a special mode of perception that transforms both seeing and hearing. We don't see images and hear sounds separately-we audio-view a trans-sensory whole. In this updated and expanded edition, Chion considers many additional examples from recent world cinema and formulates new questions for the contemporary media environment. He takes into account the evolving role of audio-vision in different theatrical environments, considering its significance for music videos, video art, commercial television, and the internet, as well as conventional cinema. Chion explores how multitrack digital sound enables astonishing detail, extending the space of the action and changing practices of scene construction. He demonstrates that speech is central to film and television and shows why "audio-logo-visual" is a more accurate term than "audiovisual." Audio-Vision shows us that sound is driving the creation of a sensory cinema. This edition includes a glossary of terms, a chronology of several hundred significant films, and the original foreword by sound designer, editor, and Oscar honoree Walter Murch.

Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other. The first section of the book examines film music in historical perspective, and the second section addresses the theoretical implications of the crossover between art forms. Chion discusses a vast variety of films across eras, genres, and continents, embracing all the different genres of music that filmmakers have used to tell their stories. Beginning with live accompaniment of silent films in early movie houses, the book analyzes Al Jolson's performance in The Jazz Singer, the zither in The Third Man, Godard's patchwork sound editing, the synthesizer welcoming the flying saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Kinshasa orchestra in Felicite, among many more. Chion considers both original scores and incorporation of preexisting works, including the use and reuse of particular composers across cinematic traditions, the introduction of popular music such as jazz and rock, and directors' attraction to atonal and dissonant music as well as musique concrete, of which he is a composer. Wide-ranging and original, Music in Cinema offers a welcoming overview for students and general readers as well as refreshingly new and valuable perspectives for film scholars.

Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.

French critic and composer Michel Chion argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise--it enacts a process of "audio-viewing." The audiovisual makes use of a wealth of tropes, devices, techniques, and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema.

The first half of "Film, A Sound Art" considers developments in technology, aesthetic trends, and individual artistic style that recast the history of film as the evolution of a truly audiovisual language. The second half explores the intersection of auditory and visual realms. With restless inventiveness, Chion develops a rhetoric that describes the effects of audio-visual combinations, forcing us to rethink sound film. He claims, for example, that the silent era (which he terms "deaf cinema") did not end with the advent of sound technology but continues to function underneath and within later films. Expanding our appreciation of cinematic experiences ranging from Dolby multitrack in action films and the eerie tricycle of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" to the way actors from different nations use their voices and words, "Film, A Sound Art" showcases the vast knowledge and innovative thinking of a major theorist.

Michel Chion's study of the film and television work of David Lynch has become, since its first English publication in 1995, the definitive book on one of America's finest contemporary directors. In this new edition Chion brings the book up-to-date to take into account Lynch's work in the past ten years, including the major features "Lost Highway, The Straight Story," and "Mulholland Drive. "Newly redesigned and re-illustrated, "David Lynch "is an indispensable companion.

Author wrote bestselling bfi Publishing title David Lynch "a joy to the reader of film criticism" Choice; 2001: A Space Odyssey to be re-released in cinemas in The Spring and highly likely to be the focus of much media attention in the new year; Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), based on Arthur C Clarke's novel, is one of the most ambitious films ever made, an epic of space exploration that takes in the whole history of humanity (as well as speculation about its future). A technical triumph that stands up today 2001 is topical also because of its meditation on the relationship between man, animal and machine. Haunting and enigmatic, it's a film that contains myriad images that seem to defy any explanation. In this multilayered study, acclaimed critic and theorist of film sound Michel Chion offers some keys to understanding 2001. Setting the film first in its historical and cultural contexts (the Space Race, the Cold War, 1960s psychedelia), Chion goes on to locate it within Kubrick's career. He then conducts a meticulous and subtle analysis of its structure and style, arguing that 2001 is an 'absolute film', a unique assemblage of cinema's elements, through which pulses a vision of human existence. 'Animals who know they will die, beings lost on earth, forever caught between two species, not animal enough, not cerebral enough.' In a supplementary chapter Chion argues that Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), is a return to 2001, a final statement of its concerns. And in a series of appendices Chion provides production details, an analytic synopsis, credits and a consideration of the legacy of 2001.

In "Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen," French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception.

Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception: we don't see images and hear sounds as separate channels, we "audio-view" a trans-sensory whole. Expanding on arguments made in his influential books The "Voice in Cinema" and "Sound in Cinema," Chion provides lapidary insight into the functions and aesthetics of sound in film and television. He considers the effects of such evolving technologies as widescreen, multitrack, and Dolby; the influences of sound on the perception of space and time; and the impact of such contemporary forms of audio-vision as music videos, video art, and commercial television. Chion concludes with an original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film.

Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.

Author wrote bestselling bfi Publishing title David Lynch "a joy to the reader of film criticism" Choice; 2001: A Space Odyssey to be re-released in cinemas in The Spring and highly likely to be the focus of much media attention in the new year; Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), based on Arthur C Clarke's novel, is one of the most ambitious films ever made, an epic of space exploration that takes in the whole history of humanity (as well as speculation about its future). A technical triumph that stands up today 2001 is topical also because of its meditation on the relationship between man, animal and machine. Haunting and enigmatic, it's a film that contains myriad images that seem to defy any explanation. In this multilayered study, acclaimed critic and theorist of film sound Michel Chion offers some keys to understanding 2001. Setting the film first in its historical and cultural contexts (the Space Race, the Cold War, 1960s psychedelia), Chion goes on to locate it within Kubrick's career. He then conducts a meticulous and subtle analysis of its structure and style, arguing that 2001 is an 'absolute film', a unique assemblage of cinema's elements, through which pulses a vision of human existence. 'Animals who know they will die, beings lost on earth, forever caught between two species, not animal enough, not cerebral enough.' In a supplementary chapter Chion argues that Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), is a return to 2001, a final statement of its concerns. And in a series of appendices Chion provides production details, an analytic synopsis, credits and a consideration of the legacy of 2001.