Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses

Kino raštai #2

by Thomas Elsaesser, Malte Hagener

What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? That is the central question for film theory, and renowned film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener use this question to guide students through all of the major film theories – from the classical period to today – in this insightful, engaging book. Every kind of cinema (and film theory) imagines an ideal spectator, and then imagines a certain relationship between the mind and body of that spectator and the screen. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from 1945 to the present, from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus’, phenomenological and cognitivist theories.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Art, Media Tie In, Philosophy, Psychology, Theory

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first encountered this book during a particularly demanding teaching stint—an online Film Studies batch from Bangalore, where I was brought in as a replacement instructor. The usual staples were there—Eisenstein, Bazin, Bordwell—but Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses felt like a breath of warm, flickering projector air. It offered an entirely new way of entering cinema: not through the cerebral corridors of semiotics or ideology, but through the body—through touch, sound, space, sensation.

Elsaesser and Hagener flip the script, asking not just what a film means, but how it feels. What does a tracking shot do to your spine? How does the rhythm of montage make your skin tingle? How does a dissonant soundscape create unease before your brain even processes the narrative? It’s phenomenology with popcorn in hand, theory in 4D.

The book doesn’t ignore the classics—it reframes them. From early cinema to post-classical auteurs, it connects theory with texture. This was gold for my students, many of whom were new to film theory but keenly sensitive to the sensory impact of cinema. It allowed me to build lectures not just around ideas, but experiences.

More than a textbook, it became a teaching tool that helped me bridge the gap between the analytic and the affective, between Godard and Ghibli. And for me personally, it reawakened that primal thrill—the shimmer on a screen, the pulse of a film score, the dark intimacy of the theatre. Theory, yes—but felt through the fingertips.

[Tree Yager · Rating 3 out of 5]

The arguments here are incredibly interesting, ultimately rearranging traditional ways of conceiving film theory away from a formalist/realist, psychoanalytic/cognitive binary structure to one organized around conceptions of the body and spectator in relation to film. The metaphors are deep and encourage readers to rethink how they interact with cinema and with theory of cinema.

However, this is in no way an introduction. Elsaesser and Hagener assume a general familiarity with film theory, for the most part, and spend more time advancing their own theory of cinema spectatorship than introducing pre-existing ones. I would recommend this book after a basic familiarity with major film theoreticians has been achieved.

[Talie · Rating 2 out of 5]

۲.۵
ایده‌ی کتاب جالب است: چه ارتباطی میان سینما، ادراک و بدن انسان وجود دارد؟
کنکاش در رابطه‌ی مادی بین بدن تماشاگر و تصویر روی پرده.
اما خود کتاب جالب نیست. نویسندگان چند سرفصل تعریف کردند و ایده‌های مرتبط چند نظریه پرداز را در حد چند پاراگراف در آن سر فصل آوردند.
مثلن در فصل سینما همچون آینه به بالاژ، نظریه‌ی آپاراتوس، لکان،  گانینگ و ... هر کدام در چند پاراگراف پرداخته شده.  قرار نیست نتیجه خاصی گرفته شود. تنها ما با لیست بلند بالایی از نظریه‌ها و نظریه پردازان طرفیم.  ترجمه بوی بدی داشت. چندین مورد با ابهام متن  مواجه شدم  و به متن اصلی مراجعه کردم اکثرن مترجم اشتباهات فاحشی انجام داده بود.

[Shashan · Rating 3 out of 5]

خوندنش زیاده طول کشید، خیلی زیاد، انقدری که گمان می‌کنم حداقل سه چهار منِ متفاوت در این مدت و تا نقطه‌ی انتهایی‌اش صفحه‌ها رو تورق کردن. بامزه‌اس.

[Vaiva Sapetkaitė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Čia ta situacija, kai mąstydamas meta, supranti, kad knyga gera ir į ją įdėta labai daug darbo ir žinių, bet tiesiogiai mažai susigaudei, kas realiai ten vyksta :)

Jaučiausi kaip nemokytas barbaras: čia buvo tiek nesuprantamų žodžių, kad jau tikrai pradėjau mąstyti, jog mano išsilavinimas - ištisios žinių spragos. Kodėl taip nutiko? Todėl, kad čia viskas remiasi filosofija, įvairiomis jos teorijomis etc, o aš nuoširdžiai (ir aistringai) visą gyvenimą nesidomėjau filosofija. Taigi, "Kino teorija: įvadas per juslių prizmę" man buvo ištisa kančia :D Vis tik įveikiau ją: nežinau, kiek naudos iš to gavau, na, bet bent jau kontekste geriau susigaudysiu. Gal kada nors ją perskaitysiu antrą kartą (jei užeis mazochistinės nuotaikos) ir galvosiu kitaip, bet dabar tai net negaliu žiūrėti į šitą knygą :)

[Kamyar · Rating 4 out of 5]

On their way to answer the 100 year old question, “what is cinema, and what’s its relationship to its spectator?”, which was originally brought up by Andre Bazin, Elsaesser and Hagener go through several theoreticians’ writings, discussing them in pairs, starting from the realist/formalist opposition to the Deleuzian/cognitivist one).

The book works well as an introductory text to film theory, establishing a general understanding of both the historical and philosophical aspects of cinema. Also if there was ever the smallest amount of doubt in me about the necessity of reading Deleuze’s text on cinema, there won’t be any after reading the last chapter.

[Gregory L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent review/reframing of a range of topics in film theory. It's a bit hard to see, though, who the target audience might be. It's so packed with esoteric terminology, largely borrowed from philosophy and the social sciences, that it might leave a lot of undergraduates (i.e. the students who would most likely be reading an "introduction" to the topic) feeling a bit leaden in the head, while the authors' treatment of each individual subject is so brief that it might not be in-depth enough to interest most grad students and professors. For me, it provided a robust and useful complement to some other recent reading and helped fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge of the field (I've shifted to film studies from the world of the theatre in recent years); I'm just not sure if it would hold many other readers' interest as it did mine.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

vielleicht auch etwas zu ambitioniert wenn man sonst nur marvel filme guckt

[Simone · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting approach to film theory which organizes bodies of pre-existing literature around metaphors of the body, seeing, hearing, etc. It's an interesting way to think about film theory and film history in a completely different way. However, I wouldn't recommend this for an intro level class, I think you'd get more out of it with a pretty solid understanding of film theory, or even with an introductory knowledge of film theory. Still, it's a compelling argument and organization.

[Yannick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hält was es verspricht.

[Awwawawa Sasasasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to film theory. Gets repetitive sometimes.

[Bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painful, but vital.

[Greta Markevičiūtė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knyga tikrai sunki, reikia labai daug gilintis į ištisus sakinius, kad suprasti, ką autoriai nori pasakyti, net turint kažkokių žinių apie kiną bei įvairias technikas. Tiesa, knyga buvo tikrai naudinga tada, kai gilinausi konkrečiai į reikiamas temas.

[Bree · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone interested in film theory, but don't know where to start or you do know where to start and have started, read this anyways. The always excellent Elsaesser gives an overview of theories organized on the spectator's body and its relationship to cinema. An excellent and thorough overview that I find very useful, if not extremely enjoyable to read. Elsaesser is good with prose and is very clear. The chapter on cinema as skin is his best.

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most introductory texts, Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener give you a pretty fair understanding of a wide variety of difficult theorists and the questions that have preoccupied them for decades. One interesting thing they do is, rather than just giving one a survey of a bunch of different thinkers, Elsaesser and Hagener attempt to actually think through these thinkers and their positions, and how they aren’t as different as they seem on the surface. However, given the wealth of film theory history AND on top of that, the wealth of film history itself, any intro will, by necessity of space, be lacking. Although this one does a great job at, well, introducing one to the topic, it doesn’t sufficiently work as a film theoretical text in and of itself as Elsaesser and Hagener try and make it out to be, although they try their best. Overall, I found this to a good text to introduce the idea of film theory, it’s relation to the senses, and how one can begin applying it to films; but, like any intro, it’s woefully lacking in actually developing a rigorous account of said theorists, giving you only a taste, and not the full meal. But again, it’s certainly there to help you begin swimming with floaties, cos some of these thinkers are incredibly obtuse! Another plus is the way they chapters are developed through metaphors allows one to grasp the full complexities of the cinematic medium, but again, at times it seems they are trying to pack so much into such a relatively short space that it feels like they are grasping at straws to sufficiently pull it all together. The great thing about said class I have read this for is that this did introduce us, and then we read a collection of film theorist essays; that seems the best way to do it, in isolation, one won’t get /too much/ from this book, but paired with some thinkers like Stanley Cavell, Laura Mulvey, Gilles Deleuze, and so on, one gets a much fuller picture and understanding of film theory and it’s relation to the film, audiences, the body and mind, and whatnot.

[Bookshire Cat]

Chapter 6 and 7 read for class. Booooring.

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 2 out of 5]

نظریه‌ی فیلم توسط نشر بیدگل با همین نام به‌چاپ رسیده است. این کتاب، برای من، از این لحاظ مفید بود که با این مفهوم آشنا شدم؛ از آن روی که نمی‌دانستم اسم کلیات این اطلاعات منسجم چیست.

[LivThebooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a course. A good introduction to film theories.

[Szymon · Rating 4 out of 5]

+2pkt do bycia filmoznawcą

[Jack Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

They say some downright nutty things occasionally, but on the whole, this was very informative and its structure was satisfying as an introduction.

[Tanner Pratt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly more bearable than Braudy and Cohen

[Ünal İpekçioğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitap gayet güzel ve ufuk açıcı fakat yayınevi hem çeviride hem baskıda okuma zevkini ve anlaşırlığı para uğruna hiç önemsememiş , punto öngörülebilir fakat kelimeler arası boşlukları ayırd etmek çok zor , tarayarak okuyanlardansanız yayın çok can sıkıcı ve viskozit. Keşke yayınevi biraz daha az tecimsel davranabilse.

[deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dannatamente denso e difficile da approcciare. Ma una volta che si prende il ritmo, è una porta aperta sul cinema che, mentre passi, ti ricopre di conoscenza.
Ci vuole impegno, ma la sostanza ti resta.

[Francesco Pizzoni]

2.5 / 5

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lettura difficile. Lo consiglio agli amanti del cinema.