Overview

The human face was said to be rediscovered with the advent of motion pictures, in which it is often viewed as expressive locus, as figure, and even as essence of the cinema. But how has the modern, technological, mass-circulating art revealed the face in ways that are also distinct from any other medium? How has it altered our perception of this quintessential incarnation of the person? The archaic powers of masks and icons, the fashioning of the individual in the humanist portrait, the modernist anxieties of fragmentation and de-figuration--these are among the cultural precedents informing our experience in the movie theatre. Yet the moving image also offers radical new confrontations with the face: Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, Donen's Funny Face, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man, Bresson's enigmatic Au hasard Balthazar, Antonioni's Screen Test, Warhol's filmic portraits of celebrity and anonymity are among the key works explored in this book. In different ways these intense encounters manifest a desire for transparency and plenitude, but--especially in post-classical cinema--they also betray a profound ambiguity that haunts the human countenance as it wavers between image and language, between what we see and what we know. The spectacular impact of the cinematic face is uncannily bound up with an opacity, a reticence. But is it not for this very reason that, like faces in the world, it still enthralls us?

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9780190656720

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Reviews

"""Noa Steimatsky's intriguing book The Face on Film oscillates between straightforward history of various cinematic tropes of the face and theoretical treatise on modernity and then postmodernity's grasp of the human face. Her study charts the transformation of mythic faces of cinema's past into a complex commercial image and existential unintelligibility within postmodernity. Refreshingly, the book offers a history of performance disguised as high theory and will pique the interest of film and cultural theorists and performers and artists alike."" -- Senses of Cinema ""Despite its grand title, The Face on Film is no bubbly celebration of the beautiful countenances that comprise the history of big-screen glitz and glamor. Rather, UC Berkeley professor Noa Steimatsky investigates the ontological repercussions of capturing the human face via motion picture photography, and does so by surveying canonical film theory and criticism...In order to reap the rewards of Steimatsky's analyses, then, readers must exercise patience...And they will be rewarded...her observations [are] insightful, well-argued, and poetically expressed. Especially wonderful is the chapter on the multitudes contained in Warhol's deceptively, eerily minimalist portraits of Edie Sedgwick."" -- Film Comment ""Noa Steimatsky's intricate prose flows like blood through the capillaries of The Face on Film making its subject throb, blush, and sometimes turn pallid. Her study will be one of a handful to last as long as the filmmakers she so precisely, lovingly, longingly treats: Dreyer, Hitchcock, Antonioni, Warhol, Bresson. Without blinking, and without hesitating, Steimatsky confronts and describes-draws and draws out-the experience of the face as well as of film."" -- Dudley Andrew, Yale University ""The Face on Film is a brilliant meditation on the historical importance of the face both inside and outside the cinema and the way questions of its signification and efficacy have been exacerbated in modernity and late modernity. Detailed and elegant readings of films buttress Steimatsky's compelling argument that the opacity or illegibility of the face always accompanies and subtends its legibility. She directly addresses the question of our enduring cultural obsession with this enigmatic yet central site linked to identity, expressivity, singularity and contingency. Vigorous, intelligent and lucid, this work will surely have a strong impact on current debates about aesthetics and ethics."" -- Mary Ann Doane, University of California - Berkeley ""With this powerful book, Noa Steimatsky emerges as one of our profoundest observers of the possibilities of the medium of film. The Face on Film both caresses the surface and probes the profundities of the human face in cinema. Balancing a historical overview, examination of the long critical engagement with cinematic faces, and close analysis of carefully selected films, Steimatsky demonstrates the capacity of the face on film to both reveal and conceal meaning and emotion."" -- Tom Gunning, University of Chicago"

Author Information

Noa Steimatsky is a film scholar who lives and writes in San Francisco. She teaches at the University of California - Berkeley.

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