Table Of ContentANXIOUS CINEPHILIA
Film and Culture
FILM AND CULTURE
A series of Columbia University Press
Edited by John Belton
For a complete list of titles, see page 303
Anxious Cinephilia
Pleasure and Peril at the Movies
Sarah Keller
Columbia University Press New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup . columbia . edu
Copyright © 2020 Columbia University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Keller, Sarah (Sarah K.), author.
Title: Anxious cinephilia : pleasure and peril at the movies / Sarah Keller.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2020] | Series: Film and culture |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019043044 (print) | LCCN 2019043045 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231180863
(hardback) | ISBN 9780231180870 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780231543309 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Appreciation. | Motion pictures—Psychological aspects. |
Motion pictures—History.
Classification: LCC PN1995 .K397 2020 (print) | LCC PN1995 (ebook) |
DDC 791.4301/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043044
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043045
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-f ree paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover image: The Lady from Shanghai. © 1948, renewed 1975 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
The Power and Perils of Cinema 1
What Is Cinephilia, and Why Is It so Anxious? 14
Cinephilia: A “Declaration of Love” 27
The Chapters: Fixing a Wave 34
CHAPTER ONE
Ardor and Anxiety: The History of Cinephilia 37
Cinephilia and Early Cinema 39
Life and Death, Delight and Dread in the Transition
to Feature- Length Narrative Cinema 44
Prewar Cinephilia in the 1920s and 1930s 49
Epicenter: French Postwar Cinephilia 61
Expanding, Celebrating, and Marketing Cinephilia:
Film Festivals 68
Cinephilia’s Spread 76
Into an Uncertain Future: Cinephilia Now and Later 81
CHAPTER TWO
Enchanting Images 88
Adventures Through the Looking Glass: Negotiating
Self and Other 97
Documentary Self- Presentations and Reflections 108
The Ubiquitous Camera: Self and Surveillance 115
Experimental Selves 121
The Nature of Cinematic Selves 126
Nature, Color, Texture, and the Cinephilic Encounter 129
CHAPTER THREE
Cinephilia and Technology: Anxieties and Obsolescence 135
Anxiety and Optimism Amid Technological Changes 135
Anticipation and Anxiety in the Age of Cinema’s
Transition to Sound 145
Film Colorization 154
From Films on Film to Digital Exhibition 168
CHAPTER FOUR
The Exquisite Apocalypse 181
Apocalyptic Concerns 181
Reflectionist Cinema: Processing Our Beautiful
Apocalypse 187
Apocalyptic Spaces, Places, and the Sublime 196
Technology, Cinema, and the Organic Body 200
Doubt and Dread: Apocalyptic Feelings 209
Art and Obliteration at the End of the World 214
The Last Word Is Tomorrow (and Tomorrow and
Tomorrow): The Future Foretold 218
CONCLUSION
Anxious Times, Anxious Cinema 225
Notes 231
Selected Bibliography 269
Index 279
vi Contents
Acknowledgments
I have profited from many conversations with all the smart, engaged,
anxious cinelovers I know over the years I have worked on this project. I
am deeply grateful to be part of that community. The conferences, pan-
els, seminars, and individual invitations to present my work allowed me
to air parts of this project. Thanks in particular to the organizers and
audiences who offered thoughts at presentations for Domitor, Michigan
State University, the Modernist Studies Association, New York Univer-
sity, Northwestern University, the Society for Cinema and Media Stud-
ies, the Screen conference, and the University of Minnesota.
Thanks as well to the staff at the Margaret Herrick Library of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Califor-
nia, who assisted me in finding and copying materials in their collection
about colorization and the impact of movies on youth.
I owe a special thanks to colleagues at New York University’s gradu-
ate program in cinema studies during the time I spent visiting in 2013,
especially Dan Streible, who set me up for success while there. That year,
I taught a graduate seminar, “Cinephilia/Cinephobia,” where the spark of
ideas related to this book began to catch fire. The students in that seminar
influenced my thinking about cinephilia in highly productive ways, and
I thank them for a great semester.
Colleagues from the University of Massachusetts at Boston—
especially in the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Office, the Art Depart-
ment, the Cinema Studies Program, and Healey Library— also provided
a great deal of support as this project came into being. None did so more
than Katharina Loew, who is the very best of interlocutors, writing part-
ners, co- conspirators, and friends.
A special thanks, too, to Ariel Rogers, who at more than one point
while I was writing this manuscript lent her calm, brilliant, incisive skills
as a reader and editor. I would have been lost without her generous will-
ingness to help. I deeply appreciate her kind encouragement and keen eye.
Others who also offered an ear, advice, suggestions for interesting
things to look into further, a forum for presenting work, or general
encouragement at crucial moments include Dudley Andrew, Nico Baum-
bach, Francesco Casetti, Don Crafton, Noam Elcott, Jennifer Fay, Ally
Field, David Gerstner, Tom Gunning, Barbara Hammer, Maggie Hen-
nefeld, Brian Jacobson, Daria Khitrova, Antonia Lant, Adrian Martin,
Dan Morgan, Justus Nieland, Tasha Oren, Kate Rennebohm, Theresa
Scandiffio, Girish Shambu, Tess Takahashi, Yuri Tsivian, Julie Turnock,
Malcolm Turvey, Christophe Wall- Romana, Haidee Wasson, Patricia
White, Jennifer Wild, and Josh Yumibe.
The Film and Culture series editor John Belton as well as Jennifer
Crewe and Philip Leventhal at Columbia University Press provided guid-
ance and thoughtful insights at key moments: I am grateful for their
steadfast support. They expertly shepherded this project to its resolution,
in part by also finding excellent, anonymous outside reviewers, whose
comments sharpened this manuscript in important ways.
Thanks to cinema— it has been a long-s tanding love that has sus-
tained me for my whole life.
And first and last, thanks to my extended family and especially to
my fellow cinephiles J, G, and H— for simply everything. You made the
time during which I worked on this book not only worthwhile but won-
derful. I wouldn’t have done it without you.
viii Acknowledgments
ANXIOUS CINEPHILIA
