The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.
Daniel Morgan is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and author of Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema.
"This book offers the first sustained consideration of the theoretical challenges raised by camera movements. It is a work of great erudition and philosophical ambition, taking film seriously as an art form."—Patrick Keating, Professor of Communication, Trinity University
"Rigorously theorized and persuasively argued, The Lure of the Image provides a detailed and illuminating analysis of a key aspect of the cinema that has been glossed over in film studies for decades. This is outstanding work, and scholars will have to contend with Morgan's conclusions for a long time."—Kristen Whissel, Professor of Film and Media, University of California, Berkeley
306 pp.6 x 9Illus: 43 b/w photographs
9780520344259$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Aug 2021