Signs and Meaning in the Cinema

by Peter Wollen

Overview

Published as part of the BFI Silver series, this is the third edition of Peter Wollen's seminal work of film theory. First published in 1969, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodology of structuralism and semiotics. Featuring a new foreword by David Rodowick, this text explores the way in which a new approach to the cinema can be combined with a new approach to aesthetics.

The book is divided into three main sections: the first deals with the work of S.M. Eisenstein, both as a director and theorist of his art. The second concerns the auteur theory and investigates the recurrence of themes and images throughout a director's career. The third section shows how the study of cinema can be considered as a province of the general study of signs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844573615
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/23/2013
Series:	BFI Silver
Edition description:	5th ed. 2013
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

PETER WOLLEN taught film at UCLA. He wrote a number of books, including the BFI
Film Classic on Singin' in the Rain, published in 1992 and reprinted in a new edition in
2012. He is the co-writer (with Mark Peploe) of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger
(Professione: Reporter) (1974).

D. N. RODOWICK is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Visual and Environmental
Studies, and Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

The Devil is a Woman: Marlene Dietrich

Foreword (by David Rodowick)

Introduction

1. Eisenstein's aesthetics

2. The auteur theory

3. The semiology of cinema

Conclusion (1972)

Booklist

Acknowledgements