Reality Transformed

Description

A new look at film that succeeds in combining the realist and formalist sides of an ongoing debate.In Reality Transformed Irving Singer offers a new approach to the philosophy of film. Returning to the classical debate between realists and formalists, he shows how the opposing positions may be harmonized and united. Singer concentrates on questions about appearance and reality, the visual and the literary, and the interplay between communication as a goal and alienation as a hazard in films of every sort. In three exemplary chapters, he provides suggestive readings of Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, and Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. Reality Transformed will interest the general reader as well as students in all fields related to film studies.

There has been a traditional split in film studiesbetween the Bazinians and the Eisensteinians—those who believe themedium has a special aptitude for reality and those who would stress itspurely formal and autonomous characteristics. This soberly argued bookattempts to make peace using philosophical humanism. Taking as hispremise the currently unfashionable idea that narrative cinema hassomething to do with life, Singer demonstrates how it transforms ourcommon experience into art.—Sight & Sound—
There has been a traditional split in film studies between the Bazinians and the Eisensteinians–those who believe the medium has a special aptitude for reality and those who would stress its purely formal and autonomous characteristics. This soberly argued book attempts to make peace using philosophical humanism. Taking as his premise the currently unfashionable idea that narrative cinema has something to do with life Singer demonstrates how it transforms our common experience into art.

—Sight & Sound— Irving Singer was Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He was the author of the trilogies The Nature of Love and Meaning in Life, Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up, Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas, all published by the MIT Press, and many other books. US