, the Cinema of Attractions

Abstract

Twenty years ago, noted film scholars Tom Gunning and Andre; 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 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 "Attractions" 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. Lumiére, 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.