Film as Social Practice

List of illustrations xi Acknowledgements xiii Preface xv Introduction 1(6) 1 The feature film industry 7(36) The feature film today 8(6) The establishment of the feature film 14(5) American domination of the feature film industry 19(5) New competitors, new strategies, 'new Hollywood' 24(11) Spectacle versus narrative 35(4) Suggestions for further work 39(4) 2 From seventh art to social practice - a history of film studies 43(22) Early aesthetic approaches 44(4) Realist approaches 48(4) Bazin 52(1) Auteurs and genres 53(4) The institutionalization of film studies 57(2) Film as social practice 59(3) Suggestions for further work 62(3) 3 Film languages 65(32) Culture and language 66(6) Film as a signifying practice 72(1) The signifying systems 73(19) Reading the film 92(2) Suggestions for further work 94(3) 4 Film narrative 97(32) The universality of story 98(4) The function of narrative 102(3) Structuralism and narrative 105(4) Codes and conventions 109(10) Genre 119(6) Narrative and narration 125(2) Suggestions for further work 127(2) 5 Film audiences 129(48) Specifying the audience 134(5) Stars 139(7) The film experience 146(3) The film spectator and psychoanalysis 149(2) Audience identification 151(9) Desire and the image 160(3) Audiences, texts, and meanings 163(7) Cultural identities 170(5) Suggestions for further work 175(2) 6 Film, culture, and ideology 177(40) Film and national culture 182(5) A national cinema: the Australian revival 187(10) Ideology in the text 197(7) Issues in ideological analysis 204(9) Suggestions for further work 213(4) 7 Applications 217(22) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 218(7) Desperately Seeking Susan 225(11) Conclusion 236(3) References 239(10) Index 249