Playful Frames

STEVEN RYBIN is an associate professor of film studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His books as author include Shots to the Heart: For the Love of Film Performance, Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance, and Gestures of Love: Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema.

• Introduction: A Scope Quartet1 Jean Negulesco (1900-1993): CinemaScope Connoisseur2 Blake Edwards (1922-2010): Panavision Pyrotechnics3 Robert Altman (1925-2006): Diffusive Widescreen4 John Carpenter (1948–): Anamorphic HauntingAcknowledgmentsWorks CitedIndex

“Until I began reading Steve Rybin’s surprising and steadily adventurous book, I had never thought of linking widescreen frames and their accompanying camera movements with playfulness. His bravura inquiry enlarges and richly complicates the ludic possibilities, in addition to offering fresh, provocative readings of four very different American directors’ works. Rybin writes with such infectious gusto and has a splendid ability to make the visual details whose mystery he probes come alive on the page.”- George Toles (University of Manitoba) "With detailed and lively formal analyses, Rybin shows the often surprising ways in which four very different directors used the possibilities of the wider aspect ratio to orchestrate viewer attention for comedy, terror, drama, characterization, and spectacle. Playful Frames is an invaluable addition to our understanding of widescreen aesthetics, expanding beyond viewer immersion to questions of reflexivity, genre, and intermediality."- Lisa Bode (author of Making Believe: Screen Performance and Special Effects in Popular Cinema)