John Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Reading

‘Gibbs undertakes an ambitious, large-scale project of critical historiography that, despite its scope, nevertheless manifests a quality of attention to the fi ne grain of concrete detail befitting its primary subject: the best achievements of interpretive or expressive mise-en-scène criticism … Gibbs’s book is one of major scope and historical ambition, covering half a century, the origins of and obstacles to the gradual invention of a critical practice, and key developments in an emerging academic discipline. Yet at every point, the book’s insights achieve precision and nuance through the deft way Gibbs builds this history almost entirely by sustained, meticulous analysis of primary sources, in which the critical developments outlined above took shape. His work here thus needs to be recognized as an extraordinary feat of scholarship.’Elliott Logan, Projections Volume 11, Issue 1

• Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: Sight and Sound in the 1950s3. ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19604. Movie: aims and contexts5. Movie: approaches and analysis6. Melodrama and mise-en-scène7. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex|Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: sight and sound in the 1950s ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19603. Movie: aims and contexts4. Movie: approaches and analysis5. Melodrama and mise-en-scène6. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex

John Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Reading

‘Gibbs undertakes an ambitious, large-scale project of critical historiography that, despite its scope, nevertheless manifests a quality of attention to the fi ne grain of concrete detail befitting its primary subject: the best achievements of interpretive or expressive mise-en-scène criticism … Gibbs’s book is one of major scope and historical ambition, covering half a century, the origins of and obstacles to the gradual invention of a critical practice, and key developments in an emerging academic discipline. Yet at every point, the book’s insights achieve precision and nuance through the deft way Gibbs builds this history almost entirely by sustained, meticulous analysis of primary sources, in which the critical developments outlined above took shape. His work here thus needs to be recognized as an extraordinary feat of scholarship.’Elliott Logan, Projections Volume 11, Issue 1

• Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: Sight and Sound in the 1950s3. ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19604. Movie: aims and contexts5. Movie: approaches and analysis6. Melodrama and mise-en-scène7. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex|Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: sight and sound in the 1950s ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19603. Movie: aims and contexts4. Movie: approaches and analysis5. Melodrama and mise-en-scène6. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex

John Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Reading

‘Gibbs undertakes an ambitious, large-scale project of critical historiography that, despite its scope, nevertheless manifests a quality of attention to the fi ne grain of concrete detail befitting its primary subject: the best achievements of interpretive or expressive mise-en-scène criticism … Gibbs’s book is one of major scope and historical ambition, covering half a century, the origins of and obstacles to the gradual invention of a critical practice, and key developments in an emerging academic discipline. Yet at every point, the book’s insights achieve precision and nuance through the deft way Gibbs builds this history almost entirely by sustained, meticulous analysis of primary sources, in which the critical developments outlined above took shape. His work here thus needs to be recognized as an extraordinary feat of scholarship.’Elliott Logan, Projections Volume 11, Issue 1

• Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: Sight and Sound in the 1950s3. ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19604. Movie: aims and contexts5. Movie: approaches and analysis6. Melodrama and mise-en-scène7. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex|Introduction1. Sequence2. Transfusion and transformation: sight and sound in the 1950s ‘Pistols for three, coffee for one’: the battle of form and content, circa 19603. Movie: aims and contexts4. Movie: approaches and analysis5. Melodrama and mise-en-scène6. Postscript: Bordwell’s interventionsConclusionBibliographyIndex