Film Moments

TOM BROWN is Lecturer in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading, UK. He is co-Editor, with James Bennett, of Film and Television After DVD (2008). JAMES WALTERS is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Fantasy Film(2010) and Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema (2008).

• Acknowledgments.- Notes on Contributors.- Preface.- PART ONE: CRITICISM.- Shadow Play and Dripping Teat: The Night of the Hunter (1955); T.Gunning.- Between Melodrama and Realism: Under the Skin of the City (2001); L.Mulvey.- Internalising the Musical: The Band Wagon (1953); A.Klevan.- The Visitor's Discarded Clothes in Theorem (1968); S.Bruzzi.- Style and Sincerity in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004); J.Walters.- The Moves: Blood (1989); A.Martin.- The Properties of Images: Lust for Life (1956); S.Neale.- Two Views Over Water: Action and Absorption in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957); E.Gallafent.- Making an Entrance: Bette Davis's First Appearance in Jezebel (1938); M.Shingler.- A Narrative Parenthesis in Life is Beautiful (1997); D.Thomas.- The End of Summer: Conte d'été (1996); J.Leigh.- Enter Lisa: Rear Window (1954); D.Pye.- Opening Up The Secret Garden (1993); S.Smith.- A Magnified Meeting in Written on the Wind (1956); S.Peacock.- 'Everything is connected, and everything matters': Relationships in I [heart] Huckabees (2004); J.Gibbs.- The Ending of 8 ½ (1963); R.Dyer.- PART TWO: HISTORY.- Haptic Vision and Consumerism: a Moment from Fritz Lang's Siegfried (1924); T.Elsaesser.- Visions of Sound: City Lights (1931); C.Barr.- 'Entertainment and dystopia': Maurice Chevalier Performs Avec le sourire (1936); T.Brown.- Music, Crime and the Gaze: La Bête humaine (1938); G.Vincendeau.- Thunder and Lightning: Gone with the Wind (1939) and the Logic of Synchronisation; R.Altman.- Hearing, Fearing: the Sonic Design of Suspense in Cat People (1942); H.Hanson.- 'I've seen him take his knife…': The Searchers (1956); R.J.Ellis.- Another Story: Myth and History in Bonnie and Clyde (1967); P.Cook.- A Sculptural Moment: the Epilogue to Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (1971); M.Broughton.- Star Wars (1977): Back and Forth in Time and Space; J.Bignell.- Between Freedom and Confinement: Music in The World (2004); C.Gorbman.- PART THREE: THEORY.- Performance, with Strings Attached: Team America's (2004) Snub to the Actor; A.Clayton.- Éloge de l'amour (2001): Moments in Time; A.Butler.- Contested Endings: Interpreting The Piano's (1993) Final Scenes; B.Klinger.- Mourning, Loss and Trauma, and the Ambiguities of Proper and Improper Desire in Exotica (1994); E.Cowie.- Stepping Out of Blockbuster Mode: the Lighting of the Beacons in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003); K.Thompson.- Dorothy's Dream: Mindscreen in The Wizard of Oz (1939); B.F.Kawin.- Looking On and Looking the Other Way: Hotel Rwanda (2004) and the Racialised Ethics of Spectatorship; M.Aaron.- Working Through the Body: Textual-Corporeal Strategies in United 93 (2006); L.Purse.- 'I wasn't expecting that!': Cognition and Shock in Alien's (1979) Chestburster Scene; J.Frome.- The Inflection of a Dream in Scarlet Street (1945); G.M.Wilson.- Judy's Plan: a Reading of the 'Flashback' Sequence in Vertigo (1958); W.Rothman.- Index.

What is a film moment? This is a book that answers this question in a series of vivid, inspirational fragments. A stellar cast of contributors and a riveting set of examples help confirm that this is indeed a book whose own moment has well and truly come.