Beyond Realism: Naturalist Film in Theory and Practice

by Robert Singer

Beyond Naturalist Film in Theory and Practice is the first major critical study of international naturalist cinema. Often mistaken for realist film, international naturalist cinema has a unique cultural and critical history. From its earliest representation in silent films, such as Walsh's Regeneration (1915), and Eisenstein's Stachka/Strike (1925), to recent productions, such as Chukwu's Clemency (2019), and Aronofsky's The Whale (2022), the naturalist film narrative encompasses the whole of film history, traversing language, movement, and genre. The naturalist film is predicated on two foundational, intersecting paradigms that configure as one ideological system in an overarching scientific and social experimental narrative. Either the scientific or social paradigm may be dominant in the film narrative or they may simply coexist, but a naturalist film reveals both templates and, most significantly, suggests an implicit cinematic anthropology that renders the body as an observed spectacle.

280 pages, Hardcover

Published April 30, 2024

About the author

Robert Singer is a Professor of Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received a Ph.D. from New York University in Comparative Literature. His areas of expertise include literary and film interrelations, interdisciplinary research in film history and aesthetics, and comparative studies. He co-edited Zola and Film (2005), The Brooklyn Film (2003), and he also co-authored the text, The History of Brooklyn's Three Major Performing Arts Institutions (2003).