Back to Results
Cover image of Passionate Views
Cover image of Passionate Views
Share this Title:

Passionate Views

Film, Cognition, and Emotion

edited by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith

Publication Date
Binding Type

The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today.

In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of...

The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today.

In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of film studies, philosophy, and psychology explore the emotional appeal of the cinema. Employing a novel cognitive perspective, the volume investigates the relationship between genre and emotion; explores how film narrative, music, and cinematic techniques such as the close-up are used to elicit emotion; and examines the spectator's identification with and response to film characters.

An impressive range of films and topics is brought together by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, including: the success of Stella Dallas and An Affair to Remember as tearjerkers; the power of Night of the Living Dead to inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked in The Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise; the emotional basis of film comedy as seen in When Harry Met Sally; the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Local Hero to arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion in Once Upon a Time in the West and E.T.; the emotive use of music in The Elephant Man and A Clockwork Orange; Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution in Casablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Day and The Crying Game; portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs, Flaming Creatures, and Shivers; and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces in Yankee Doodle Dandy and Blade Runner.

Passionate Views offers a new approach to our understanding of film and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the emotional power of motion pictures and their relationship to the central concerns of our lives, as well as by the techniques filmmakers use to move an audience.

Reviews

Reviews

Due to the consistently high quality of the pieces, Passionate Views makes a significant contribution to film studies research.

A valuable collection of essays on the subject of film and emotion from a cognitive perspective. The contributors to this volume are top scholars whose work is known internationally. Their scholarship is sound, their arguments are well supported, and their essays are clearly written. Passionate Views is a substantial contribution to the fields of film theory and aesthetics.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
302
ISBN
9780801860119
Illustration Description
23 halftones
Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Chapter 1. Film, Emotion, and Genre
Chapter 2. Sentiment in Film Viewing
Chapter 3. The Sublime in Cinema
Chapter 4. The Emotional Basis of Film

Introduction
Part I: Kinds of Films, Kinds of Emotions
Chapter 1. Film, Emotion, and Genre
Chapter 2. Sentiment in Film Viewing
Chapter 3. The Sublime in Cinema
Chapter 4. The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy
Part II: Film Technique, Film Narrative, And Emotion
Chapter 5. Local Emotions, Global Moods, and Film Structure
Chapter 6. Emotions, Cognitions, and Narrative Patterns in Film
Chapter 7. Movie Music as Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score
Chapter 8. Time and Timing
Part III: Desire, Identification, And Empathy
Chapter 9. Narrative Desire
Chapter 10. Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film
Chapter 11. Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances
Chapter 12. The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film
Notes
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Carl Plantinga

Carl Plantinga is an associate professor of film and director of the Screenwriting and Film Studies Program at Hollins College.
Featured Contributor

Greg M. Smith

Greg M. Smith is an assistant professor of communication studies at Carlow College.