source

Susan Hayward — Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts

Hayward's dictionary of film theory: the shelf's voice for the ideological reading of every convention.

book
reel

Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (5th edn).

Good for

The theory book. Where the introductions describe how a convention works, Hayward asks whose interests it serves. Continuity editing is invisible "in the name of realism" (ckc 135); "genres function ideologically to reproduce the capitalist system" (ckc 229); the cinema spectator "is also, technically speaking, a 'voyeur'" (ckc 412); flashbacks are "a cinematic representation of memory and of history and, ultimately of subjective truth" (ckc 177). Every entry is a position, sourced to the critical literature.

Use her to put the ideological reading beside the craft reading in any concept note, and to find the name of the theorist behind an idea. Do not use her as the only voice; the entries argue rather than survey.

Cited across Continuity, Mise en scène, Chronology, Non-diegetic sound, The camera as voyeur, Formula, Iconography and Themes.

In the library

Held in Reel, the local research library of scanned and indexed film books. 165 parts, 2,366 indexed passages. Page numbering is auto-checked.

Cite passages from this book as ckc <page> — for example ckc 214.

Strongest on

Measured, not guessed. Each figure is how much denser this book is on a concept than the library average — so common words don't crowd out real specialisms.

Iconography — 4.4× the library average (27 passages)
Continuity — 4.2× the library average (40 passages)
Non-diegetic sound — 4.0× the library average (35 passages)
Themes — 3.6× the library average (272 passages)
Values — 2.2× the library average (255 passages)
Colour — 2.2× the library average (91 passages)

Go on, then

source Aaron Baker — A Companion to Martin Scorsese Aaron Baker (ed.) (Wiley Blackwell)
source Barsam & Monahan — Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film Barsam and Monahan: the most current of the introductions, strong on sound, genre as industry, and the MacGuffin.
source Boggs & Petrie — The Art of Watching Films Boggs and Petrie's classroom text: plain analytical questions, a working glossary, and the flat/round and static/dynamic character pairs.
source Bruce Block — The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media Bruce Block's practitioner's grammar of the image: contrast and affinity, the visual components, and story structure drawn as a graph.
source Christopher Kenworthy — Shoot Like Scorsese Christopher Kenworthy (Michael Wiese Productions)
source David Bordwell — Narration in the Fiction Film Bordwell's theory of narration. Only the Soviet montage chapter is in the library — read the shelf mark before citing.