Product Description

Film is an art form with a language and an aesthetic all its own. Since 1979, David Bordwell's and Kristin Thompson's Film Art has been the best-selling and widely respected introduction to the analysis of cinema. While it continues to provide the best introduction to the fundamentals of serious film study, the eighth edition has been revised be more classroom friendly by introducing film techniques earlier in the text, followed by the chapters on Film Genres. Supported by a text-specific Tutorial CD-ROM with video clips, Film Art is automatically packaged with this outstanding student learning tool.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16621 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

About the Author
David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Iowa. He is the author of The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (University California Press, 1981), Narration in the Fiction Film (University Wisconsin Press, 1985), Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (British Film Institute/Princeton University Press, 1988), Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Harvard University Press, 1989), The Cinema of Eisenstein (Harvard University Press, 1993), On the History of Film Style (Harvard University Press, 1997) and Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Harvard University Press, 2000). He has won a University Distinguished Teaching Award.

Kristin Thompson is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She holds a master's degree in film from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in film from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She has published Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (Princeton University Press, 1981), Exporting Entertainment: America's Place in World Film Markets, 1907-1934 (British Film Institute, 1985), Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton University Press, 1988), Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes; or Le Mot Juste (James H. Heinman, 1992), Storytelling in the New Hollywood (Harvard University Press, 1999), Storytelling in Film and Television (Harvard University Press, 2003), and Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film after World War I (University of Amsterdam, 2005). In her spare time she studies Egyptology.

The authors have collaborated on Film History (McGraw-Hill, 1994) with Janet Staiger, on The Classical Hollywood Cinema (Columbia University Press, 1985) and Storytelling in the New Hollywood (Harvard University Press, 1999).

Customer Reviews

For Film Buffs!
This book goes through the basics into the intermediate stages of understanding film. The pages are bright and the text is very interesting. I read most of this textbook for fun. The specific reference films are good ones so you won't mind watching them(which I highly suggest anyway). The pacing is great and the topics covered include film art and how to understand what you're watching as well as some technical aspects. I learned quite a bit in the 1st chapter alone - this is what a textbook should be like!

Very confusing and difficult to comprehend
One of the worst text books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. The text very confusing and often difficult to comprehend. If you are required to read this book for a Film class, I pity you.

Excellent
This book provides wonderful baseline knowledge about process of film making from the fruition of an idea to the completion of a movie and beyond. What makes this book especially wonderful is its excellent array of examples.