The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded

by Wanda Strauven

Overview

Twenty years ago, noted film scholars Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault introduced the phrase “cinema of attractions” to describe the essential qualities of films made in the medium’s earliest days, those produced between 1895 and 1906. Now, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded critically examines the term and its subsequent wide-ranging use in film studies.
            The collection opens with a history of the term, tracing the collaboration between Gaudreault and Gunning, the genesis of the term in their attempts to explain the spectacular effects of motion that lay at the heart of early cinema, and the pair’s debts to Sergei Eisenstein and others. This reconstruction is followed by a look at applications of the term to more recent film productions, from the works of the Wachowski brothers to virtual reality and video games.
            With essays by an impressive collection of international film scholars—and featuring contributions by Gunning and Gaudreault as well—The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded will be necessary reading for all scholars of early film and its continuing influence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789053569443
Publisher:	Amsterdam University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2007
Series:	Film Culture in Transition Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Wanda Strauven is assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Introduction to an Attractive Concept – Wanda Strauven
 
THEORY FORMATION
“The Cinema of Attractions”
Attractions: How They Came into the World – Tom Gunning
A Rational Reconstruction of “The Cinema of Attractions” – Warren Buckland
The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif – Frank Kessler
Spectacle, Attractions and Visual Pleasure – Scott Bukatman

ATTRACTION THEORIES AND TERMINOLOGIES
“Early Film”
From “Primitive Cinema” to “Kine-Attractography” – André Gaudreault
From “Primitive Cinema” to “Marvelous” – Wanda Strauven
The Attraction of the Intelligent Eye: Obsessions with the Vision Machine in Early Film Theories – Viva Paci
Rhythmic Bodies/Movies: Dance as Attraction in Early Film Culture – Laurent Guido
  
AUDIENCES AND ATTRACTIONS
“Its Spectator”
A Cinema of Contemplation, A Cinema of Discernment: Spectatorship, Intertextuality and Attractions in the 1890s – Charles Musser
The Lecturer and the Attraction – Germain Lacasse
Integrated Attractions: Style and Spectatorship in Transitional Cinema –Charlie Keil
Discipline through Diegesis: The Rube Film between “Attraction” and “Narrative Integration” – Thomas Elsaesser
 
ATTRACTION PRACTICES THROUGH HISTORY
“The Avant-Garde”: section 1
Circularity and Repetition at the Heart of the Attraction: Optical Toys and the Emergence of a New Cultural Series – Nicolas Dulac and André Gaudreault 
Lumière, the Train and the Avant-Garde – Christa Blümlinger
Programming Attractions: Avant-Garde Exhibition Practice in the 1920s and 1930s – Malte Hagener
The Associational Attractions of the Musical – Pierre-Emmanuel Jaques
 
DIGITAL MEDIA AND (UN)TAMED ATTRACTIONS
“The Avant-Garde”: section 2
Chez le Photographe c’est chez moi: Relationship of Actor and Filmed Subject to Camera in Early Film and Virtual Reality Spaces – Alison McMahan
The Hollywood Cobweb: New Laws of Attraction – Dick Tomasovic
Figures of Sensation: Between Still and Moving Images – Eivind Røssaak 
“Cutting to the Quick”: Techne, Physis, and Poiesis and the Attractions of Slow Motion – Vivian Sobchack
 
DOSSIER 
Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy – Donald Crafton
Early Cinema as a Challenge to Film History – André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning
The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde – Tom Gunning
Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity – Charles Musser
Notes on Contributors
General Bibliography 
Index