Blur

Martine Beugnet (Author) Martine Beugnet is Professor in Visual Studies at the Université Paris Cité and a member of ECHELLES, a CNRS research institute. In English, she is the author of Cinema and Sensation (2007, 2012) and Claire Denis (2004), coauthor of Proust at the Movies (2005), and coeditor of Indefinite Visions: Cinema and the Attractions of Uncertainty (2017).Lindsay Turner (Translator) Lindsay Turner is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of two collections of poetry and has translated books by Stéphane Bouquet, Éric Baratay, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Anne Dufourmantelle, Richard Rechtman, Ryoko Sekiguchi, and others.

• Prologue (Myopia) 1In Praise of Indistinction 7Blur’s Paradox: Images That Kill, 18 •High-Definition Blur, 20Definition 24Aesthetics of Blur 26Rain, Mist, Fog 29Focus 34Alfred Hitchcock: Blur, or the Staging of Desire, 36 •Alain Cavalier: Seeing Closer, 41 • Seeing [and]Touching, 43 • The Tactile Eye, 46Motion Blur 49Speeds, 50 • Slow Motion [Jean-Luc Godard], 55 • Shakiness [Sally Potter], 60 •Interlacings [Leighton Pierce], 64Reveries of the Image 68Photogénie of Melancholy 75The Painterly and the Formless 82Pictorialism [Josef von Sternberg], 82 • The Appeal ofAbstraction [Michelangelo Antonioni], 89 •Toward Formlessness, 92 • Limbo [Gus Van Sant], 94 • Photogénie of Memory, 99Technology Has No Rules 103Notes 107Figures 119

"Beugnet’s ingenious insights seep like a fog into once-crisp categories of film analysis, unsettling notions of blur as visual deficiency. Near-sighted characters, formless smudges, teary and weary vision, and perspectival and atmospheric distortions energize this compelling love song to the affordances of and cinematic predisposition toward visual chaos, vagueness, uncertainty and confusion. Clearly, it’s the perfect moment for both cinema and blur." – Karen Redrobe, author of Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis