Sam B. Girgus - Böcker

In his philosophy of ethics and time, Emmanuel Levinas highlighted the tension that exists between the "ontological adventure" of immediate experience and the "ethical adventure" of redemptive relationships-associations in which absolute responsibility engenders a transcendence of being and self. In an original commingling of philosophy and cinema study, Sam B. Girgus applies Levinas's ethics to a variety of international films. His efforts point to a transnational pattern he terms the "cinema of redemption" that portrays the struggle to connect to others in redeeming ways. Girgus not only reveals the power of these films to articulate the crisis between ontological identity and ethical subjectivity. He also locates time and ethics within the structure and content of film itself. Drawing on the work of Luce Irigaray, Tina Chanter, Kelly Oliver, and Ewa Ziarek, Girgus reconsiders Levinas and his relationship to film, engaging with a feminist focus on the sexualized female body. Girgus offers fresh readings of films from several decades and cultures, including Frank Capra's Mr.Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Federico Fellini's La dolce vita (1959), Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), John Huston's The Misfits (1961), and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

In his philosophy of ethics and time, Emmanuel Levinas highlighted the tension that exists between the "ontological adventure" of immediate experience and the "ethical adventure" of redemptive relationships-associations in which absolute responsibility engenders a transcendence of being and self. In an original commingling of philosophy and cinema study, Sam B. Girgus applies Levinas's ethics to a variety of international films. His efforts point to a transnational pattern he terms the "cinema of redemption" that portrays the struggle to connect to others in redeeming ways. Girgus not only reveals the power of these films to articulate the crisis between ontological identity and ethical subjectivity. He also locates time and ethics within the structure and content of film itself. Drawing on the work of Luce Irigaray, Tina Chanter, Kelly Oliver, and Ewa Ziarek, Girgus reconsiders Levinas and his relationship to film, engaging with a feminist focus on the sexualized female body. Girgus offers fresh readings of films from several decades and cultures, including Frank Capra's Mr.Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Federico Fellini's La dolce vita (1959), Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), John Huston's The Misfits (1961), and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

The Law of the Heart is a vigorous challenge to the prevailing concept of the “antidemocratic” image of the self in the American literary and cultural tradition. Sam B. Girgus counters this interpretation and attempts to develop a new understanding of democratic individualism and liberal humanism in American literature under the rubric of literary modernism. The image of the individual self who retreats inward, conforming to a distorted “law of the heart,” emerges from the works of such writers as Cooper and Poe and composer Charles Ives. Yet, as Girgus shows, other American writers relate the idea of the self to reality and culture in a more complex way: the self confronts and is reconciled to the paradox of history and reality. In Girgus’ view, the tradition of pragmatic, humanistic individualism provides a foundation for a future where individual liberty is a major priority. He uses literary modernism as a bridge for relating contemporary social conditions to crises of the American self and culture as seen in the works of writers including Emerson, Howells, Whitman, Henry James, William James, Fitzgerald, Bellow, and McLuhan.

The Films of Woody Allen was the first full-length work to examine the director as a serious filmmaker and artist. Sam Girgus argues that Allen has consistently been on the cutting edge of contemporary critical and cultural consciousness, challenging our notions of authorship, narrative, perspective, character, theme, ideology, gender and sexuality. This revised and updated edition includes two new chapters that examine Allen's work since 1992. Girgus argues that the scandal surrounding Allen's personal life in the early 1990s has altered his image in ways that reposition moral consciousness in his work. The union between Allen's public and private selves that created a special 'aura' about him remains intact despite the director's concerted efforts to separate his private life from his screen image. Allen now assumes a postmodern moral relativism and 'sensual realism' that differs profoundly from the moral sensibility of his earlier work.

In America on Film, first published in 2002, Sam Girgus examines a selection of films made in the last quarter of the twentieth century in an effort to trace how the notion of 'American' has changed drastically from that portrayed in American cinema up to the 1950s. In works such as Mississippi Masala, Lone Star, Malcolm X, Raging Bull, When We Were Kings, and Bugsy he finds a new and ethnically varied array of characters that embody American values, ideals, and conflicts; and a transformation in the relationship of American identity and culture to race and ethnicity, as well as to sexuality, gender, and the body. America on Film charts these changes through analysis of cinematic tensions between fiction, documentary, and modernism. An art form that combines fragments of reality with imagination, film, Girgus maintains, connects the documentary realism of the photographic image to the abstraction and non-representation of modernism.

American film directors from the late 1930s to the early 1960s instigated a renaissance of original artistic works that helped reinvigorate and renew American culture. During a time of unprecedented danger from anti-democratic forces both abroad and at home, the most imaginative and creative films of these directors - John Ford, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, Elia Kazan, George Stevens - articulated issues, themes, and realities at the core of the American experience. In this lively and original book, Sam Girgus offers a fresh look at films such as The Searchers, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, High Noon, and On the Waterfront. He shows how these films are part of the cultural and historic debate that examines, structures, and questions what modern America means to its people, the world, and history.

The Films of Woody Allen was the first full-length work to examine the director as a serious filmmaker and artist. Sam Girgus argues that Allen has consistently been on the cutting edge of contemporary critical and cultural consciousness, challenging our notions of authorship, narrative, perspective, character, theme, ideology, gender and sexuality. This revised and updated edition includes two new chapters that examine Allen's work since 1992. Girgus argues that the scandal surrounding Allen's personal life in the early 1990s has altered his image in ways that reposition moral consciousness in his work. The union between Allen's public and private selves that created a special 'aura' about him remains intact despite the director's concerted efforts to separate his private life from his screen image. Allen now assumes a postmodern moral relativism and 'sensual realism' that differs profoundly from the moral sensibility of his earlier work.

In America on Film, first published in 2002, Sam Girgus examines a selection of films made in the last quarter of the twentieth century in an effort to trace how the notion of 'American' has changed drastically from that portrayed in American cinema up to the 1950s. In works such as Mississippi Masala, Lone Star, Malcolm X, Raging Bull, When We Were Kings, and Bugsy he finds a new and ethnically varied array of characters that embody American values, ideals, and conflicts; and a transformation in the relationship of American identity and culture to race and ethnicity, as well as to sexuality, gender, and the body. America on Film charts these changes through analysis of cinematic tensions between fiction, documentary, and modernism. An art form that combines fragments of reality with imagination, film, Girgus maintains, connects the documentary realism of the photographic image to the abstraction and non-representation of modernism.

The steady rise of Clint Eastwood’s career parallels a pressing desire in American society over the past five decades for a figure and story of purpose, meaning, and redemption. Eastwood has not only told and filmed that story, he has come to embody it for many in his public image and film persona. Eastwood responds to a national yearning for a vision of individual action and initiative, personal responsibility, and potential for renewal. An iconic director and star for his westerns, urban thrillers, and adventure stories, Eastwood has taken film art to new horizons of meaning in a series of masterpieces that engage the ethical and moral consciousness of our times, including Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, and Mystic River. He revolutionized the war film with the unprecedented achievement of filming the opposing sides of the same historic battle in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, using this saga to present a sharply critical representation of the new America that emerged out of the war, a society of images and spectacles. This timely examination of Clint Eastwood’s oeuvre against the backdrop of contemporary America will be fascinating reading for students of film and popular culture, as well as readers with interests in Eastwood’s work, American film and culture.

The steady rise of Clint Eastwood’s career parallels a pressing desire in American society over the past five decades for a figure and story of purpose, meaning, and redemption. Eastwood has not only told and filmed that story, he has come to embody it for many in his public image and film persona. Eastwood responds to a national yearning for a vision of individual action and initiative, personal responsibility, and potential for renewal. An iconic director and star for his westerns, urban thrillers, and adventure stories, Eastwood has taken film art to new horizons of meaning in a series of masterpieces that engage the ethical and moral consciousness of our times, including Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, and Mystic River. He revolutionized the war film with the unprecedented achievement of filming the opposing sides of the same historic battle in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, using this saga to present a sharply critical representation of the new America that emerged out of the war, a society of images and spectacles. This timely examination of Clint Eastwood’s oeuvre against the backdrop of contemporary America will be fascinating reading for students of film and popular culture, as well as readers with interests in Eastwood’s work, American film and culture.

Girgus defines the American idea as the set of values, beliefs, and traditions of democracy, equality, and republicanism and argues that writers of the New Covenant tradition challenged society to live up to its own imperatives for individual and cultural renewal. Abraham Cahan, Anzi Yezierska, Henry Roth, Johanna Kaplan, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and E. L. Doctorow formed a new poetics"" to articulate a modern version of the myth and ideology of America.""A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In Time, Existential Presence and the Cinematic Image, Sam B. Girgus relates Laura Mulvey’s theory of “delayed cinema” to ideas on time and the relationship to the other in the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas and Julia Kristeva, among others. The sustained tension in film between, in Mulvey’s phrase, “stillness and the moving image” enacts a drama of existential emergence. The stillness of the framed image in relation to the moving image opens “free” cinematic time and space for a fresh engagement with crucial ethical and cultural issues. With close readings of films such as The Bicycle Thieves, Two Days, One Night, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Revenant and The Age of Innocence, this book proposes a fresh approach to reading film in the context of emerging existential presence and the ethical imperative.

In Time, Existential Presence and the Cinematic Image, Sam B. Girgus relates Laura Mulvey’s theory of “delayed cinema” to ideas on time and the relationship to the other in the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas and Julia Kristeva, among others. The sustained tension in film between, in Mulvey’s phrase, “stillness and the moving image” enacts a drama of existential emergence. The stillness of the framed image in relation to the moving image opens “free” cinematic time and space for a fresh engagement with crucial ethical and cultural issues. With close readings of films such as The Bicycle Thieves, Two Days, One Night, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Revenant and The Age of Innocence, this book proposes a fresh approach to reading film in the context of emerging existential presence and the ethical imperative.

From generation to generation, three outstanding American Jewish directors—William Wyler, Sidney Lumet, and Steven Spielberg--advance a tradition of Jewish writers, artists, and leaders who propagate the ethical basis of the American Idea and Creed.