The Face on Film

Zusatztext 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 Steimatskys 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 Warhols deceptively, eerily minimalist portraits of Edie Sedgwick. Informationen zum Autor Noa Steimatsky is a film scholar who lives and writes in San Francisco. She teaches at the University of California - Berkeley. Klappentext The human face is a privileged arena of expressivity; yet, this book suggests, cinema's most radical encounters with the face give rise to ambiguity, illegibility an equivocation between image and language. Braiding theoretical and aesthetic considerations with close analysis of films, Steimatsky interrogates the convergence of archaic powers and modern anxieties in our experience of the face on film. Zusammenfassung The human face was said to have been rediscovered with the advent of motion pictures, in which it was often viewed as expressive locus, as figure, and even as essence of the cinema. But how has this modern, technological, mass-circulating medium revealed the face in ways that are also distinct from any other? 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, time-based 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 Au hazard, Balthazar, Antonioni's Screen Test, Warhol's filmic portraits of celebrity and anonymity. Such intense encounters, examined in this book, manifest a desire for transparency and plenitude, but--especially in post-classical cinema--also betray a profound ambiguity that haunts the human countenance, confronting interiority as opacity, treading the gap between image and language. The spectacular impact of the cinematic face is uncannily intertwined with a reticence, an ineffability; but is it not for this very reason that--like faces in the world--it still enthralls us? Inhaltsverzeichnis Table of Contents Acknowledgements Preface: Face Moving Image A Dispositif An Ur-Image The Face Against the Image Itineraries Chapter One: We Had Faces, Then Expressivity in the 1920s Joan of Arc, Inevitably The Face and its Voices Glamour/Anti-Glamour Chapter Two: Roland Barthes Looks at the Stars Towards "Visages et Figures," and circa 1953 Excursus on the Face in Language Into the Movie Theater Ultra-Face Excursus on the Mask From Cult to Charm: Funny Face Chapter Three: Face-to-Face (with The Wrong Man) What Godard Saw What the Clerk Saw Excursus on Anthropometrics Not a Mirror, Not a Lamp Chapter Four: Pass/Fail: Screen Test, Apparatus, Subject The Antonioni Screen Test Excursus on the Portrait Sitting for the Portrait is the Portrait Outer and Inner Space, and the Pathos of Time Fail Better Chapter Five: In Reticence (Bresson) The Epidermal and the Written The Image Against the Face Not an Open Book, but a Door Ajar Postface: The Two-Shot ...

Auteur
Noa Steimatsky is Visiting Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of California--Berkeley.

Texte du rabat

The human face is a privileged arena of expressivity; yet, this book suggests, cinema's most radical encounters with the face give rise to ambiguity, illegibility an equivocation between image and language. Braiding theoretical and aesthetic considerations with close analysis of films, Steimatsky interrogates the convergence of archaic powers and modern anxieties in our experience of the face on film.

Résumé
The human face was said to have been rediscovered with the advent of motion pictures, in which it was often viewed as expressive locus, as figure, and even as essence of the cinema. But how has this modern, technological, mass-circulating medium revealed the face in ways that are also distinct from any other? 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, time-based 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 Au hazard, Balthazar, Antonioni's Screen Test, Warhol's filmic portraits of celebrity and anonymity. Such intense encounters, examined in this book, manifest a desire for transparency and plenitude, but--especially in post-classical cinema--also betray a profound ambiguity that haunts the human countenance, confronting interiority as opacity, treading the gap between image and language. The spectacular impact of the cinematic face is uncannily intertwined with a reticence, an ineffability; but is it not for this very reason that--like faces in the world--it still enthralls us?

Contenu

• Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements

• Preface: Face Moving Image

• A Dispositif

• An Ur-Image

• The Face Against the Image

• Itineraries

• Chapter One: We Had Faces, Then

• Expressivity in the 1920s

• Joan of Arc, Inevitably

• The Face and its Voices

• Glamour/Anti-Glamour

• Chapter Two: Roland Barthes Looks at the Stars

• Towards "Visages et Figures," and circa 1953

• Excursus on the Face in Language

• Into the Movie Theater

• Ultra-Face

• Excursus on the Mask

• From Cult to Charm: Funny Face

• Chapter Three: Face-to-Face (with The Wrong Man)

• What Godard Saw

• What the Clerk Saw

• Excursus on Anthropometrics

• Not a Mirror, Not a Lamp

• Chapter Four: Pass/Fail: Screen Test, Apparatus, Subject

• The Antonioni Screen Test

• Excursus on the Portrait

• Sitting for the Portrait is the Portrait

• Outer and Inner Space, and the Pathos of Time

• Fail Better

• Chapter Five: In Reticence (Bresson)

• The Epidermal and the Written

• The Image Against the Face

• Not an Open Book, but a Door Ajar

• Postface: The Two-Shot