The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera

by Daniel Morgan

Overview

The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520344273
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Daniel Morgan is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and author of Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Talking about the Moving Camera 1

Part 1

2 The Lure of the Image 25

3 Where Are We? 57

Part 2

4 Object Lessons 91

The Variable Dynamics of Point of View

5 Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity 135

6 The Curious Ironist 169

Terrence Malick and the Drama of Perspective

7 Beyond the (Single) Camera 219

Notes 245

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

"Morgan provides an admirably comprehensive and remarkably nuanced exploration of one of the most undeniably fascinating yet strangely neglected aspects of cinema, one that is sure to be the definitive work on the subject for years if not decades to come. . . . The Lure of the Image is exemplary."

Senses of Cinema