A Cinema Without Walls - Professor Timothy Corrigan

"One of the sharpest and most productive analyses of our contemporaneity
and the place of cinema within it and of our new historical relations
as spectators to the imaginary universe on the movie screen. This is a
study that will be of intense interest to film theorists and historians,
cultural critics, mass media analysts, and anyone concerned with the
complicated place of culture in our world today."--Dana Polan, English
and Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh


How have modern
advertising techniques, the widespread use of VCRs, conglomerate
takeovers of studios and film archives, cable TV, and media coverage of
the Vietnam war changed the ways we watch movies? And how, in turn, have
those different habits and patterns of viewing changed the ways in
which films address their viewers? Drawing on a wide variety of American
and European films and on many theoretical models, Timothy Corrigan
investigates what he calls "a cinema without walls," taking a close look
at particular films in order to see how we watch them differently in
the post-Vietnam era. He examines cult audiences, narrative structure,
genre films (road movies, in particular), and contemporary politics as
they engage new models of film making and viewing. He thus provides a
rare, serious attempt to deal with contemporary movies.
Corrigan
discusses filmmakers from a variety of backgrounds and cultures,
including Martin Scorsese, Raoul Ruiz, Michael Cimino, Alexander Kluge,
Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen Frears, and Wim Wenders. He offers
detailed analyses of films such as Platoon; Full Metal Jacket; 9-1/2
Weeks; The Singing Detective; Choose Me; After Hours; Badlands; The King
of Comedy; Paris, Texas; and My Beautiful Laundrette. Orchestrating
this diversity, Corrigan provides a critical basis for making sense of
contemporary film culture and its major achievements.