Reflexivity in Film and Culture: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard

by Robert Stam

Book Overview

Reflexivity refers to those moments in fiction and film when the work suddenly calls attention to itself as a fictional construct. For example, in literature a character might suddenly step out of the story and address the reader.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231079451
• ISBN13: 9780231079457
• Release Date: August 1992
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

a great resource on reflexivity in cinema

This book is especially helpful on discovering the self-reflexive language of Godard and its relation to literature and Brecht. No redundant rhetoric, just to the point and quite informative.

Would love to see a new edition!

I have had this book since it was first released and have always found the notion of self-reflexivity fascinating. Self-reflexivity, as it was once explored by Brecht and by Vertov, is far from a mere stylistic device. It has far-reaching political implications. In these essays, Stam very clearly explores the roots of modernism through 5 chapter headings: 1- Allegories of Spectatorship (Hitchcock's voyeurism and Godard) 2- The Process of Production (Balzac, Vertov, Fellini, Truffaut, Wenders) 3- The Genre of Self-Consciousness (Woody Allen, Quixotic themes, Lolita, etc..) 4- The Carnival of Modernism (Godard pretty much takes over this chapter) 5- The Pleasures of Subversion (Brecht, Godard, split screens etc.) I would love to see this book in a more recent edition, with a chapter on user-generated content, and news-media analysis. A great read!