Awards

• Short-listed for And/Or Book Awards: Best Moving Image Book 2010
• Short-listed for Willy Haas Award 2009
• Shortlisted for And/Or Book Awards: Best Moving Image Book 2010.
• Shortlisted for Willy Haas Award 2009.

Overview

Existing critical traditions fail to fully account for the impact of Austrian director, and 2009 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke’s films, situated as they are between intellectual projects and popular entertainments. In this first English-language introduction to, and critical analysis of, his work, each of Haneke’s eight feature films are considered in detail. Particular attention is given to what the author terms Michael Haneke’s ‘ethical cinema’ and the unique impact of these films upon their audiences. Drawing on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Stanley Cavell, Catherine Wheatley, introduces a new way of marrying film and moral philosophy, which explicitly examines the ethics of the film viewing experience. Haneke’s films offer the viewer great freedom whilst simultaneously imposing a considerable burden of responsibility. How Haneke achieves this break with more conventional spectatorship models, and what its far-reaching implications are for film theory in general, constitute the principal subject of this book.

Full Product Details

9781845455576

Table of Contents

Reviews

Both her exacting discussions of the films themselves and the even-handed, pointed summations of the critical debate around them are impressive feats - her succinct prose is eminently readable, even where couched in scholarly language.A * Sight & Sound, The International Film Magazine This is a bold, lucid, fiercely intelligent book, a vital addition to the study of contemporary cinema by one of the UK's brightest young film critics.A * Screen Haneke stands as one of world cinema's most important auteurs, and as such his work demands the kind of lucid and rigorous interrogation provided here. This is an essential book - the real first step in an understanding and an elucidation of Haneke's oeuvre.A * Ben McCann, University of Adelaide Wheatley's compelling philosophical contextualization of the intrinsic rupture of filmic and spectatorial practice in Haneke's oeuvre provides a fresh and very rich platform for cinema and cultural studies. Her analysis of the filmmaker's sophisticated challenges and subversions suggests a path beyond traditional and counter-cinema, and will certainly shift established concepts of the art form and theoretical reception.A * Robert von Dassanowsky, Professor of German and Film Studies, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs ... a timely and important contribution to film theory, European cinema history and to an understanding of Michael Haneke as an extremely important contemporary filmmaker. Wheatley provides a sophisticated but accessible philosophical framework within which to consider Haneke's films and grounds this work firmly through close analysis of all of Haneke's major films.A * David Sorfa, Liverpool John Moores University

Author Information

Catherine Wheatley holds degrees from the universities of Bath and Oxford, and is currently a researcher at the University of Southampton. She is a regular contributor to Sight & Sound magazine, as well as having published articles in several journals and books.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available