Awards

• Winner of Winner of the Limina Prize for Best International Book in Cinema Studies of 2017 2018 Honorary Mention from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Overview

Full Product Details

9780199863143

Table of Contents

Reviews

Noa Steimatsky's intricate prose flows like blood through the capillaries of <em>The Face on Film</em> 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 <em>The Face on Film</em> 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. <em>The Face on Film</em> 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

Noa Steimatsky's intricate prose flows like blood through the capillaries of <em>The Face on Film</em> 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. -- <em>Dudley Andrew, Yale University</em> <em>The Face on Film</em> 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. -- <em>Mary Ann Doane, University of California - Berkeley</em> With this powerful book, Noa Steimatsky emerges as one of our profoundest observers of the possibilities of the medium of film. <em>The Face on Film</em> 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. -- <em>Tom Gunning, University of Chicago</em>

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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