Analysis of Film - Softcover

Written between 1969 and 1990, the essays in this collection remind the reader of what a brilliant film analyst Bellour was. Building on the work of Lacan, Metz, and Thierry Kuntzel, Bellour developed his own approach to analysis based primarily on a shot-by-shot study. This method enabled him to come as close as possible to surmounting what he perceived as the greatest difficulty in analyzing films-how to capture the moving image in words. Most of the essays here deal with Hitchcock films-The Birds, Psycho, Marnie, and North by Northwest. The last shows Bellour at his magisterial best: he couples a carefully worked out Oedipal interpretation of the plot with a close reading of the crop-duster sequence. The result is one of the best pieces ever written on Hitchcock. The other Hitchcock essays are also superb. The editor included pieces on other films-The Big Sleep, Gigi, The Lonedale Operator-but it is for the Hitchcock analyses that this book will be most valued. No serious student of film should miss the great work collected in this volume.W. A. Vincent, Michigan State University, Choice, November 2000

The Analysis of Film is at once a book about the methods of close film analysis, the narrative structure of Hollywood film, Hitchcock's work--The Birds, Marnie, Psycho. North by Northwest--and the role of the woman in western representation. But, finally, it is a book about cinema itself and the love for cinema that drives the passion for analyzing the supreme art form of the twentieth centry.