The western is the most popular and enduring of Hollywood forms. It is one embodiment of a traditional theme in American culture: the West as both Garden of natural dignity and innocence and also as treacherous Desert resisting the gradual sweep of agrarian progress and community values. Westerns have in common: a) history, America's past; b)…

The post-World War II period was one of the liveliest in the history of the cinema. This is a collection of 33 critical articles on some of the best films of the perd. Most of the essays explicate the themes and symbols of the films. The essays deal with these films: "The Apu Trilogy,""L'Avventura,""Balthazar,""Blow-Up,""Bonnie and Clyde," Citizen…

This study deals primarily with recent academically oriented critical material, but it also embraces the range of film criticism that has been written for the mass audience in newspapers and periodicals. The study considers eight types of critical approaches to analyzing film: the journalistic approach, which contains both a reportorial-review and…

This book examines the unique patterns and structure that make cinema a story-telling art form. A comparison of books or plays with films that have been made from them reveals the essence of cinema: its emphasis on movement, fluidity, and pictorial image. Excerpts from shooting scripts demonstrate the ways in which the components of drama…

Film reviews by Stanley Kauffmann are presented, most of which originated in "The New Republic," and cover the years 1967-70. The reviews discuss the major American and Foreign films of that period. In addition to his original review, Kauffmann sometimes publishes afterthoughts about the film. (JK)

Based on the assumption that critical viewing can broaden the range of films one can respond to, increase understanding, and ultimately lead to an intensification of subjective response, this book offers a critical approach to experiencing movies. After explaining the critical method to be used, several films in the context of different aesthetic…

Designed as an introductory film text for high school and early college students, this book contains twelve chapters, each dealing with one of the following subjects: "Citizen Kane," the history and production of the film, film and cinematic terms, the image on the film, the image of the world through film, editing, sounds, the director,…

Analyzes Alfred Hitchcock's use of archetypal fear in his movies to create a strong audience response. (RB)

The purposes of this book are to introduce film as an art and to show how close, both in form and content, literature and the narrative film are to one another. To accomplish these purposes, the basic components of literature and film are compared, including language (the novel uses words, while the film uses images), point of view, and figurative…

The criteria for judging movies which are presented here are based on the belief that film criticism becomes rational, if not "objective", when it displays and inspects the nature of its evidence and the bases of its arguments. The author dissents from the view of early film theorists that montage is the essence of cinema, and that cinema is to be…

Discusses T. S. Elliot's essay, "The Three Voices of Poetry" which conceptualizes the position taken by the poet or creator. Suggests that an examination of documentary film, within the three voices concept, expands the critical framework of the film genre. (MH)

Aspects to consider in studying the film "The Red Kite" are (1) a synopsis of the story, which concerns a young father's musings about life and death; (2) the film's structure, which focuses on the father's encounters in a store, on a bus, in his home, at a party, and finally on a hill while flying the kite; (3) possible themes, such as…

Still photography is useful as a teaching aid for demonstrating the technical aspects of photocomposition. In analyzing still photographs of his own making or from magazines and books, the student learns to move beyond simple expression which may not interest others to a point where he thinks in terms of communication combined with the intent to…