From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Read
Literature Like a Professor comes an indispensable analysis of our most
celebrated medium, film.
No art form is as instantly and continuously gratifying as film. When
the house lights go down and the lion roars, we settle in to be shocked,
frightened, elated, moved, and thrilled. We expect magic. While we're
being exhilarated and terrified, our minds are also processing data of
all sorts--visual, linguistic, auditory, spatial--to collaborate in the
construction of meaning.
Thomas C. Foster's Reading the Silver Screen will show movie buffs,
students of film, and even aspiring screenwriters and directors how to
transition from merely being viewers to becoming accomplished readers of
this great medium. Beginning with the grammar of film, Foster
demonstrates how every art form has a grammar, a set of practices and
if-then propositions that amount to rules. He goes on to explain how the
language of film enables movies to communicate the purpose behind their
stories and the messages they are striving to convey to audiences by
following and occasionally breaking these rules.
Using the investigative approach readers love in How to Read Literature
Like a Professor, Foster examines this grammar of film through various
classic and current movies both foreign and domestic, with special
recourse to the "AFI 100 Years-100 Movies" lists. The categories are
idiosyncratic yet revealing.
In Reading the Silver Screen, readers will gain the expertise and
confidence to glean all they can from the movies they love.
