Horse Who Drank the Sky

MURRAY POMERANCE is an independent film scholar in Toronto and the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Johnny Depp Starts Here and City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination (both Rutgers University Press).

• AcknowledgmentsOvertureThinking about the studios Neubabelsberg, The Dreamers, Doris Day, and the predicament of the "onlooker," Now, Voyager, and Dead Man1. A Voluptuous GazeThinking about a dream of Sandra Oh, Short Cuts, Safe, Sideways, The Lookout, Disturbia, The Dead Zone, the gaze or the glance, turning away from film, the "cinema of attractions," glancing at plot, Magnolia, battle effects, Rebecca, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Gojira, "panoramic perception," and vertiginous games2. The Hero in the China SeaThinking about Nicholas Ray's filmmaking, storylines and lines of action, performance and continuity, and Rebel Without a Cause3. A Great FaceThinking about Alfred Hitchcock, North by Northwest, monuments and legalities, Mount Rushmore, stereopticons and the rear-projection process, Gary Cooper, George W. Bush, James Stewart, and Cary Grant4. The Smoke and the KnifeThinking about Fritz Lang's M, police procedure, craft thieving, the rationality of smoke, women in Weimar Germany, motherhood and surveillance, severing and civilization5. A Call from EverywhereThinking about On the Beach, The Exorcist, acousmetre: the voice that cannot be seen, The Wizard of Oz, And the Ship Sails On..., The Man Who Knew Too Much, Pan's Labyrinth, Trafic, narrative and de-acousmatization, and Stage Fright6. As Time Goes ByThinking about cinematic transitions, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Lawrence of Arabia and the pre-lap, The Passenger, Blackmail, The Graduate, "faux pre-lap" in Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, the upholstering buffer, the acousmetre passe, the "gasp" and the "turn," From Russia with Love, The Bourne Identity, Saturday Night Fever, editing and sound in the 1970s, Stanley Kubrick and Nestor Almendros7. The Speaking EyeThinking about the speaking eye, the democratic screen, Jaws, animal performance, acting authenticity, falling out of role, cinematic realism and cinematic reality, My Man Godfrey, Mischa Auer, "reading" the screen, the morality and politics of watching, the "doctrine of natural expression," the filmmaker's will, and cinematic "importance"8. Not an Unusual StoryThinking about Vertigo, Dinner at Eight, the sound revolution, John Barrymore, The Last Laugh, class structure and the comedy of manners, modernity and social collapse, The Great Depression and ressentiment, writing that obliterates the writer, "looking marvelous," performance and biography, and the acting of Marie Dressler9. The Horse Who Drank the SkyThinking about the cinematic sense of place, fragmentation, shellshock, explosions in cinema, Babel, Until the End of the World, Royal Wedding, extraterritoriality and television, Fahrenheit 451, the coup d'oeil, Sergeant York, "Invisible landscapes," theater design and "marginal appreciation," mental vertigo, The Bourne Supremacy, Tourettic cinema, Blow-Up, color, and The Band WagonWorks Cited and ConsultedIndex

A testament to the critical force of cinephilia, this book moves effortlessly across a dazzling array of films and ways of reading them. Pomerance counts among the most compelling writers on cinema in the contemporary field. - Tom Conley (Harvard University) A testament to the critical force of cinephilia, this book moves effortlessly across a dazzling array of films and ways of reading them. Pomerance counts among the most compelling writers on cinema in the contemporary field. - Tom Conley (Harvard University) "Pomerance’s joy in celebrating the cinematic moment, whether visual or sonic, does not obscure his knack for sophisticated film analysis." - John Fidler (Senses of Cinema) Today, the introduction of new media and non-theatrical viewing intersect with traditional theoretical approaches, making Pomerance's polemic all the more poignant. - Jennifer L. Fleeger (Quarterly Review of Film and Video)