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book: Cavell on Film
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Cavell on Film

  • Stanley Cavell
  • Edited by: William Rothman and William Rothman
  • With contributions by: William Rothman
  • Preface by: William Rothman
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025

About this book

A collection of the philosopher Stanley Cavell's most important writings on cinema.

Stanley Cavell was the first philosopher in the Anglo-American tradition to make film a central concern of his work, and this volume offer a substantially complete retrospective of his writings on cinema, which continues to offer inspiration and new directions to the field of film and media studies. The essays and other writings collected here include major theoretical statements and extended critical studies of individual films and filmmakers, as well as occasional pieces, all of which illustrate Cavell's practice of film-philosophy as it developed in the decades following the publication of his landmark work, The World Viewed. This revised edition includes six additional essays, five of them previously unpublished, that illuminate his inspiring vision of a humanistic study rooted in a marriage of film and philosophy. In his introduction and in the preface to this new edition, William Rothman provides an overview of Cavell's work on film and his aims as a philosopher more generally.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: William Rothman William Rothman is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami. His many books include Tuitions and Intuitions: Essays at the Intersection of Film Criticism and Philosophy and Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition, both also published by SUNY Press. --- Contributor: William Rothman William Rothman is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami. His many books include Tuitions and Intuitions: Essays at the Intersection of Film Criticism and Philosophy and Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition, both also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"A perfect stand-alone intro to Cavell's overarching project, namely to transmit his continuously amazed perception that film exists as an instantiation of philosophy itself." — Film Comment

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    v
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    Illustrations

    ix
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    Preface to the Second Edition

    xi
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    Introduction

    xxv
    William Rothman
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    1 What Becomes of Things on Film?

    1
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    2 On Makavejev on Bergman

    11
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    3 North by Northwest

    41
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    4 The Fact of Television

    59
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    5 The Thought of Movies

    87
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    6 What (Good) Is a Film Museum? What Is a Film Culture?

    107
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    7 What Photography Calls Thinking

    115
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    8 A Capra Moment

    135
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    9 The Fantastic of Philosophy

    145
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    10 Two Cheers for Romance

    153
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    11 The Advent of Videos

    167
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    12 Prénom: Marie

    175
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    13 Nothing Goes without Saying: Reading the Marx Brothers

    183
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    14 Seasons of Love

    193
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    15 Words of Welcome

    205
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    16 Groundhog Day

    221
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    17 Something Out of the Ordinary

    223
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    18 The World as Things: Collecting Thoughts on Collecting

    241
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    19 Concluding Remarks Presented at Paris Colloquium on La Projection du monde

    281
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    20 On Eric Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter

    287
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    21 The Image of the Psychoanalyst in Film

    295
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    22 Opera in (and As) Film

    305
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    23 Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow

    319
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    24 The Good of Film

    333
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    25 Moral Reasoning

    349
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    26 Crossing Paths

    361
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    27 After Half a Century

    375
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    28 Introducing The Lady Eve

    383
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    29 Slapstick without Sticks

    387
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    30 Fred Astaire Asserts the Right to Praise

    397
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    31 Doug Liman’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith

    429
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    32 O Brother, Where Art Thou?

    435
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    33 Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale

    453
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    Index

    455
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 5, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9798855801637
Edition:
Second Edition
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
514
Illustrations:
50
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9798855801637
eBook ISBN: 9798855801637
Keywords for this book
Cultural Studies : Popular Culture; Film; Visual Culture; and Performing Arts : Film Studies; Philosophy : Aesthetics; Philosophy : Philosophy
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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Winner of the OpenAthens UX Award 2026
Winner of the OpenAthens UX Award 2026
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