Overview

Light Thoughts is about the interaction of thought between the spectator and the film in cinema; not just a matter of describing the play of a film as a thought process, but rather of formulating ideas about this interaction through detailed analysis of what is actually seen and heard in the cinema. The chapters include explorations of: gaffes in performance, harmonized activity, and so-called “unison” action; the sale of gender roles and attitudes surreptitiously; the viewer’s way of (relentlessly) traveling forward through film; human gesture and the variant forms of comprehension it inspires; the cinematic onlooker—she who sees another person onscreen while we watch her seeing without knowing in any way how and what she takes in; the editorial technique of making the viewer wait for an explanation of what is being seen now; to long discussions of Antonioni, pointing to his camera movement in space and our affiliation with it; the problem of secrecy in cinematic narrative; the function and variability of the close-up insert; the problem of reading the image and handing the obvious; various confusions of narrative time; surveillance, doubt, and point of view; expression, meaning, and the face; and much more. This book offers a series of original analyses of techniques used in films, which function as the basis for enhancing our understanding of cinema – if not as a medium specifically, then certainly as a medium used for telling stories and conveying the complexities of human character.

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Table of Contents

Reviews

The book succeeds in bridging the gap between analytical rigor and poetic sensitivity. The author examines the complex entanglement of film elements (precisely named and described) and viewer perception, exploring how observation, interpretation, knowledge, affection and intuition intertwine in this process on multi-layered levels. A transdisciplinary dialogue elegantly develops between philosophy, film and media theory, literature, music, and painting—relational media aesthetics at its best. * Christine Reeh Peters, Junior professor for Theory and practice of artistic research in digital media, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany * Every word in every chapter conveys a deep love and a thoughtful engagement with cinema. Murray Pomerance dives into film’s mysteries, not in order to resolve them, but in order to teach us to swim in them – and more particularly to enjoy the transformative touch of its waters, to excite in its eddies, to grow with its flows. A master cinephile in action. * William Brown, Assistant Professor of Film, University of British Columbia, Canada *

The book succeeds in bridging the gap between analytical rigor and poetic sensitivity. The author examines the complex entanglement of film elements (precisely named and described) and viewer perception, exploring how observation, interpretation, knowledge, affection and intuition intertwine in this process on multi-layered levels. A transdisciplinary dialogue elegantly develops between philosophy, film and media theory, literature, music, and painting—relational media aesthetics at its best. * Christine Reeh Peters, Junior professor for Theory and practice of artistic research in digital media, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany * Every word in every chapter conveys a deep love and a thoughtful engagement with cinema. Murray Pomerance dives into film’s mysteries, not in order to resolve them, but in order to teach us to swim in them – and more particularly to enjoy the transformative touch of its waters, to excite in its eddies, to grow with its flows. A master cinephile in action. * William Brown, Assistant Professor of Film, University of British Columbia, Canada * If the most serious philosophy undertakes to invent new concepts, rather than study old ones, then Light Thoughts is film-philosophy at its most dazzlingly innovative. Drawing on rich examples from classical and contemporary Hollywood to European cinema and beyond, Murray Pomerance invites not just thinking on film, but thinking made possible by film. Read it, then read it again. * Daniel Varndell, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Winchester, UK * Light Thoughts is a playful, illuminating, rewarding, and wide-ranging examination of what is distinctive and difficult about how film makes us see and think, and what is distinctive and difficult about how we think and write about film. Through careful analysis of individual films and phenomena such as editing, performance, memory, technology, and the human face, Murray Pomerance invites us to reconsider our experiences of “the screen and its strange rewards.” * Neil Badmington, Professor of English Literature, Cardiff University, UK *

Author Information

Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto, Canada, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Edge of the Screen (Bloomsbury, 2024); Uncanny Cinema: Agonies of the Viewing Experience (Bloomsbury, 2022); Color It True: Impressions of Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022); The Film Cheat: Film Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (Bloomsbury, 2020); and many others.

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