The Story of the Lost Reflection: The Alienation of the Image in Western and Polish Cinema

by Paul Coates

Book by Coates, Paul

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1985

About the author

Paul Coates is a professor emeritus of film studies at Western University, Ontario. Previously, he taught at Georgia, McGill, and Aberdeen, and his books include The Story of the Lost Reflection (1985), The Gorgon’s Gaze (1991), Lucid Dreams: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski (ed., 1999), Cinema and Colour (2010), Screening the Face (2012), and Comparative Cinema: Late and Last Things in Literature and Film (2021).

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pauline Kael admired this book, and I see no reason to demur. I was just watching Andre Rublev on cable, and while Coates' remarks on that masterpiece are not extensive, his essay here on Tarkovsky is richly speculative. I have yet to read insights on Robert Altman that better Coates', and his "Fragments of a Theory of Cinema," has helped me to reflect on historicity and color film. Rarely see this around anymore, but I return to it frequently.

[Dan Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun, brainy book. Better read in bits and pieces than cover to cover as it has a consciously fragmented style.