Attractions of the Moving Image

Tom Gunning is professor emeritus in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, where he taught for over two decades. He is the author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity, as well as numerous articles. With André Gaudreault he originated the influential theory of the “Cinema of Attractions.” Daniel Morgan is professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema and The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera.

“Remarkably, it is the first time a selection of Gunning's essays has been gathered into a single volume, and the result is an embarrassment of riches. . . . To read one of Gunning's essays . . . is to be struck by his matter-of-factness, and his remarkable ability to coin a phrase. Often, he begins not only with an atypically clear statement of his position but also the circumstances that brought him to the point of writing: a filmic discovery, a call for papers, or an ongoing debate to which he feels he can contribute. Indeed, Gunning makes palpable his active engagement with contemporary moving image culture--here is a scholar who clearly goes to the movies--even when he is writing about proto- or early cinema."