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An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema
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An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema Hardcover - 2014

by James Naremore


From the publisher

In 1895, Louis Lumire supposedly said that cinema is "an invention without a future." James Naremore uses this legendary remark as a starting point for a meditation on the so-called death of cinema in the digital age, and as a way of introducing a wide-ranging series of his essays on movies past and present. These essays include discussions of authorship, adaptation, and acting; commentaries on Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, John Huston, and Stanley Kubrick; and reviews of more recent work by non-Hollywood directors Pedro Costa, Abbas Kiarostami, Ral Ruiz, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Important themes recur: the relations between modernity, modernism, and postmodernism; the changing mediascape and death of older technologies; and the need for robust critical writing in an era when print journalism is waning and the humanities are devalued. The book concludes with essays on four major American film critics: James Agee, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris, and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

From the rear cover

"James Naremore is one of the most deservedly admired critics of our time, and this collection presents an array of perceptive, readable essays on critical, historical, and theoretical topics that have never been more clearly and articulately explored." --David Sterritt, author of Spike Lee's America "Reading over this collection of essays, I am struck by how important James Naremore's voice is to the field. The notion of the film scholar as critic is, as he says at one point, an idea that is under siege. Naremore's robust, pellucid, and consistently perceptive critical intelligence is the antidote to this denigration of criticism." --Richard Allen, co-author of Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema

Details

  • Title An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema
  • Author James Naremore
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 368
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of California Press
  • Date 2014
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780520279735 / 0520279735
  • Weight 1.35 lbs (0.61 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 in (22.86 x 15.49 x 2.79 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Motion pictures
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2013032932
  • Dewey Decimal Code 791.430

About the author

James Naremore is Emeritus Chancellors' Professor of Communication and Culture, English, and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. His books include More Than Night, Acting in the Cinema, The Magic World of Orson Welles, The Films of Vincente Minnelli, and On Kubrick.