Performing Ethics Through Film Style

Edward Lamberti has a PhD in Film Studies from King’s College London and he works at the BBFC. He is the editor of Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age(2012).

Lamberti proposes that certain films by the Dardenne brothers, Barbet Schroeder and Paul Schrader perform the Levinasian ethical encounter in ways that involve the viewer in that experience and responsibility. This original intervention in the field of Levinasian ethics and film is sharply focused, compelling, and beautifully written. The book engages with debates about film as language, raises questions about film as performativity, and through close analysis shows how style creates ethical encounters with the Other. 　Lamberti demonstrates how film can be performative Levinasian ethics, and this makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the ethical possibilities with which film-philosophy is concerned.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Textual Performances in Levinas and FilmPart I: The Dardenne Brothers: An Ethics Without Rest1. Je Pense à Vous and La Promesse: From Describing to Performing2. Levinasian Responsibility in Le Fils3. The Kid with a Bike and the Reframing of EthicsPart II: Barbet Schroeder: Devoted to the Other4. Maîtresse: Direction Without Domination5. The Ethical and the Juridical in Reversal of Fortune and Terror’s Advocate6. Our Lady of the Assassins and Levinas’s Ethics as First PhilosophyPart III: Paul Schrader: An Unexpected Ethics7. American Gigolo and the Ethics of Falling in Love8. Levinasian Limits of Performativity in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters9. Passivity and Responsibility in The Comfort of Strangers, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and Adam ResurrectedConclusion: Levinasian Films in the WorldNotesBibliographyIndex