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First published in 1969, "Signs and Meaning in the Cinema"
transformed the emerging discipline of film studies. Remarkably
eclectic and informed, Peter Wollen's highly influential and
groundbreaking work remains a brilliant and accessible theorisation
of film as an art form and as a sign system.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first explores
the work of Sergei Eisenstein as film-maker, designer and
aesthetician. The second, which contains a celebrated comparison of
the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks, is an exposition
and defence of the auteur theory. The third formulates a semiology
of the cinema, invoking cinema as an exemplary test-case for
comparative aesthetics and general theories of signification.
Wollen's Conclusion argues for an avant-garde cinema,
bringing
post-structuralist ideas into his discussion of Godard and other
contemporaries.
Published as part of the BFI Silver series, this fifth edition
features a new foreword by film theorist David Rodowick and brings
together material from the four previous editions, inviting the
reader to trace the development of Wollen's thinking, and the
unfolding of the discourse of cinema.
Sixty years after its release, Singin' in the Rain (1951) remains
one of the best loved films ever made. Yet despite dazzling success
with the public, it never received its fair share of critical
analysis. Gene Kelly's genius as a performer is undeniable.
Acknowledged less often is his innovatory contribution as director.
Peter Wollen's illuminating study of Singin' in the Rain does
justice to this complex film. In a brilliant shot-by-shot analysis
of the famous title number, he shows how skilfully Kelly weaves the
dance and musical elements into the narrative, successfully
combining two distinctive traditions within American Dance: tap and
ballet. At the time of the film's production, its scriptwriters
Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and indeed Kelly himself, were all
under threat from McCarthyism. Wollen describes how the fallout
from blacklisting curtailed the careers of many of those who worked
on the film and argues convincingly that the film represents the
high point in their careers. In his foreword to this special
edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI
Film Classics series, Geoff Andrew looks at the film's legacy and
celebrates the passion, lucidity and originality of Wollen's
analysis. Summing up its enduring appeal, Andrew writes: 'Singin'
in the Rain isn't just a musical, it's a movie about the movies.'
Raiding the Icebox is a kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and
radical subcultures of the twentieth century, and explains how the
most powerful artistic statements of the era redrew the line
between high and low art. Beginning with an analysis of the role of
Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet, Wollen argues that modernism has
always had a hidden, suppressed side which cannot easily be
absorbed into the master-narrative of modernity. Wollen reviews the
hopes, fears and expectations of artists and critics such as the
Bauhaus movement, as fascinated by Henry Ford's assembly line as
they were by the Hollywood dream factory, concluding with Guy
Debord's caustic dystopian vision of an all-consuming "Society of
the Spectacle." Finally, Wollen chronicles the emergence of a
subversive sensibility as he explores some of the unexpected new
cultural forms which non-Western artists are taking as modernism
enters into crisis at the beginning of a new century: reversing the
rules of the game and raiding the icebox of the West.
Provides a kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and radical
subcultures of the twentieth century, and explains how artistic
statements of the era redrew the line between high and low art.
In this new collection of essays on film, all written over the last
ten years, Peter Wollen explores an extraordinarily wide range of
topics, stretching from an analysis of 'Time in Film and Video Art'
to a study of 'Riff-Raff Realism' in British films. There are
provocative discussions of the works of established auteur
directors such as Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock and of the
film-making careers of such experimental movie-makers as William
Burroughs and Viking Eggeling, the dadaist pioneer of abstract
film. The collection also includes fascinating studies of a number
of film classics, such as John Huston's Freud, Jean Renoir's Rules
of the Game and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Other essays deal with
the relationship of film to the other arts, such as dance and
architecture, and explore the interaction between film and
anthropology. This is not a theoretical book but it is one that
suggests many new approaches to thinking about film and many
unexpected connections between film studies and the history of such
strangely related activities as espionage, psychoanalysis,
Stalinism, love of speed and digital technology. Full of
fascinating new insights, Peter Wollen's new book is based on the
premise that there are no fixed ways of writing about film but,
rather, a plethora of paths leading in very different directions,
each contributing to a new understanding of the twentieth century's
major art-form.
Kathy Acker was one of the most original, subversive and
influential writers of the late 20th century. Known variously, and
notoriously, as a consummate postmodernist, feminist, post-punk and
plagiarist, her oeuvreover a dozen novels and novellashas inspired
a generation of writers and artists. Lust for Life is the
definitive collection of essays on Acker's inimitable work,
including Peter Wollen's elegiac primer, widely considered the best
introduction to Acker, and Avital Ronell's erudite meditation on
friendship and mourning. Together these essays by scholars and
writers reveal Acker's profound and innovative project, and the
ways in which fiction can penetrate the heart of political and
cultural life.
In this stunning new collection of texts on visual art, Peter
Wollen explores an extraordinary range of topics, from an analysis
of "Global Conceptualism" to a mind-bending study of "Magritte and
the Bowler Hat", from Gerhard Richter to provocative texts on the
work of artists such as Victor Burgin, Frida Kahlo, and Derek
Jarman. Other essays deal with the relationships that have
developed between visual art and other media, including one on the
convergence of art and fashion, and another that explores the role
of art and film in creating the American myth of the West. The
collection also includes a study of Situationist attitudes to art
and architecture, reflections on the relation between art and
technology, and an essay on Museums and Rubbish Theory.
The films of Hitchcock, Welles and Godard; the aesthetics of
photography and the technology of cinema; art and revolution in
Russia and in Mexico; the avant-gardes in film and in
painting-these are among the many topics of Peter Wollen's essays.
Interwoven with fictional treatments of such themes as memory,
dream, sexuality and writing, they compose a remarkable, perhaps
unique, volume. These "readings and writings" are informed by
Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the history of art itself.
Their concern is with signification: with the ways in which
meanings are produced in dominant art forms and with the
counter-strategies by which these meanings may be questioned or
dislodged, in the practice of politically and aesthetically radical
alternatives. A concluding retrospect reviews the political,
intellectual and aesthetic avant-garde currents of the fifteen
years over which these texts were written, outlining some
perspectives for oppositional art today.
First published in 1969, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema
transformed the emerging discipline of film studies. Remarkably
eclectic and informed, Peter Wollen's highly influential and
groundbreaking work remains a brilliant and accessible theorisation
of film as an art form and as a sign system. The book is divided
into three main sections. The first explores the work of Sergei
Eisenstein as film-maker, designer and aesthetician. The second,
which contains a celebrated comparison of the films of John Ford
and Howard Hawks, is an exposition and defence of the auteur
theory. The third formulates a semiology of the cinema, invoking
cinema as an exemplary test-case for comparative aesthetics and
general theories of signification. Wollen's Conclusion argues for
an avant-garde cinema, bringing post-structuralist ideas into his
discussion of Godard and other contemporaries. Published as part of
the BFI Silver series, this fifth edition features a new foreword
by film theorist David Rodowick and brings together material from
the four previous editions, inviting the reader to trace the
development of Wollen's thinking, and the unfolding of the
discourse of cinema.
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