Recommended Reading: Cinema Studies

With the Academy Awards set for this weekend, we want to aim a key light on our terrific books in film history and cinema studies. Call the gaffer! A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film by Joseph Luzzi “Luzzi brings a set of powerful resources to his new study: a vast erudition, an ear finely attuned to inter-arts allusions, and an ability to discern the workings of poetic tropes within the language of cinema. The result is a deepened understanding of the category of the aesthetic as it relates to Italian film criticism and an affirmation of the riches that this body of canonical films offers to scholars and lay connoisseurs of the seventh art.”—Millicent Marcus, Yale University

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Music in the Shadows: Noir Musical Films by Sheri Chinen Biesen “The book nicely balances in-depth historical research and previous film noir scholarship with fresh ideas and a writing style that is both evocative and concise. The author doesn't force the films into the model of her theory; instead the films guide the theory, a quality often lacking in film writing. Music in the Shadows ultimately succeeds on two levels, both in providing an entertaining and enlightening read, as well as an impetus to watch previously unseen films and rewatch familiar classics with a new perspective.”—Noir City

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Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream by Mark Osteen “Only a few of the many books on film noir are essential. This is one of them . . . A smart, clearly written book.”—Choice “Mark Osteen manages to add something new and substantial to the discourse on film noir—an examination of the ways in which the American Dream is subverted, challenged, and ultimately discounted by the harsh realities of a noir universe, which more directly aligns itself with society than with the phantom hope of endless upward mobility.”—Wheeler Winston Dixon, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

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Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy, by Paola Marrati, translated by Alisa Hartz When Stories Travel: Cross-Cultural Encounters between Fiction and Film, by Cristina Della Coletta Math Goes to the Movies, by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film, by Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman

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Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ, by Thomas Leitch The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II, by David Welky Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, by John T. Irwin Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons, by Jonathan Rosenbaum