Cinema Studies: Book Reviews Monaco, Book Review

Moreover, this aspect of the text investigates the 'language' of film in a way that causes us to appreciate the form's singularity. Such is to say that in this investigation of the surreal and culturally disturbing elements which have invaded film in spiritually sick societies, we are given a profound understanding of exactly why one might choose film as a way to formulate a language that is otherwise absent of platform and inexpressible.

By contrast, such essays are steeped in lengthy and pedantic examinations such as that provided by Andre Bazin and entitled "The Ontology of Photographic Image." Here, the author goes to lengths to deconstruct the manner in which language is established by the careful arrangement of visual impressions within the context of a shot. Angles, objects and the arrangement of interactants all are referenced, accordingly to Bazin, as crucial phrases in the message communicated. This is a useful point of argument. However, the approach taken is characteristically dry and over-burdened by film jargon, as if to provide foundation to the overarching collection's primary case that film discussion can indeed by deeply obscured within the framework of what is demonstrated to be its own language.

While this is a fair hypothesis, the Braudy & Cohen text appears to work far to strenuously to illustrate this point, anthologizing a host of perspectives that while all nuanced and argumentative in their own regard, would nonetheless be common in their obfuscation of the subject in highly specialized terms and references, providing a work that is not overly dense but nonetheless tends to reduce the discourse on film to a dry academic compilation…