Sam Rohdie – författare

Montage enters into a dialogue with the cinema, probing and playing with its language of motion and stillness, continuity and discontinuity, constraint and openness, time and duration. Comprised of a series of elegantly-written and intellectually vibrant essays, Sam Rohdie’s book carefully expresses his ideas and arguments in a manner free from the complexities of contemporary theory and cultural criticism. As much a book written with the cinema as about it, Montage explores associative and comparative possibilities in the films of directors such as Takeshi Kitano, Jean Renoir, D.W. Griffith, Howard Hawks, Lev Kulsehov, Sergei Eisenstein and Alfred Hitchcock. It offers new and fascinating perspectives on mise en scène, framing, shots, and narrative variation. In combining the sensitive analysis of film forms and structures with an awareness of their historical and artistic relation to other art forms, it also elucidates an appreciation of montage aesthetics that is attentive to the influences of photography, painting and other arts. Montage is a book that will enrich our ways of seeing, understanding, and enjoying the cinema.

Comprised of fourteen chapters, the book opens with studies of Louis Feuillade, Jean Painlevé, Jean Vigo and Georges Franju. In each case the author finds original points of reference and cross-reference to other film-makers, and visual artists, particularly within modernism. Successful as free-standing short essays on their subject, the chapters also situate the work of these film-makers less within the context of French cinema history, than within other cinema histories and intellectual traditions. This is an important gesture both in terms of the general architecture of the book, and in terms of its commitment to reclaiming the work of these figures for a wide community of film and cinema studies teachers, students, and enthusiasts, particularly those interested in developing (or disagreeing with!) alternative approaches to the history and language of cinema. Undoubtedly, Intersections is a provocative and challenging read, but that does not make it any less urgent or necessary.

An attempt to locate cinema alongside philosophy, painting, geography and travel in terms of a history of modernism. The book focuses on a collection of geographical and ethnographic films and photographs amassed by banker Albert Kahn, in the 1900s - arguably an instance of French modernism.

Federico Fellini (1920-93) was one of the most inventive of film-makers and he remains one of the best loved. Director of a whole series of celebrated films - among them La Strada (1954) The Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), Otto e Mezzo (1963) and Amarcord (1973) - he created melancholy, magical worlds peopled by clowns, dreamers, conmen, trumpeters and werewolves. Fellini Lexicon explores the forms and substances, significances and insignificances, objects and shadows in Fellini's work - the dance and music of his characters, the colour, light, and movement in his images. The Lexicon accompanies Fellini's films, rather than seeking to possess them, taking pleasure in their incongruities, exaggerations, absurdities and surprises. The entries are reversible, overlapping, often unlikely, combining careful analysis of the films with a celebration of their richness. Fellini Lexicon is an original, delightful approach to Fellini's work and to the practice of film criticism.

Montage enters into a dialogue with the cinema, probing and playing with its language of motion and stillness, continuity and discontinuity, constraint and openness, time and duration. Comprised of a series of elegantly-written and intellectually vibrant essays, Sam Rohdie’s book carefully expresses his ideas and arguments in a manner free from the complexities of contemporary theory and cultural criticism. As much a book written with the cinema as about it, Montage explores associative and comparative possibilities in the films of directors such as Takeshi Kitano, Jean Renoir, D.W. Griffith, Howard Hawks, Lev Kulsehov, Sergei Eisenstein and Alfred Hitchcock. It offers new and fascinating perspectives on mise en scène, framing, shots, and narrative variation. In combining the sensitive analysis of film forms and structures with an awareness of their historical and artistic relation to other art forms, it also elucidates an appreciation of montage aesthetics that is attentive to the influences of photography, painting and other arts. Montage is a book that will enrich our ways of seeing, understanding, and enjoying the cinema.

This book is at once a detailed study of a range of individual filmmakers and a study of the modernism in which they are situated. It consists of fifty categories arranged in alphabetical order, among which are allegory, bricolage, classicism, contradiction, desire, destructuring and writing. Each category, though autonomous, interacts, intersects and juxtaposes with the others, entering into a dialogue with them and in so doing creates connections, illuminations, associations and rhymes which may not have arisen in a more conventional framework.The author refers to particular films and directors that raise questions related to modernism, and, inevitably, thereby to classicism. Jean-Luc Godard’s work is at the centre of the book, though it spreads out, evokes and echoes other filmmakers and their work, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, João César Monteiro, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Orson Welles. This innovative and eloquently written text book will be an essential resource for all film students.

Federico Fellini (1920-93) was one of the most inventive of film-makers and he remains one of the best loved. Director of a whole series of celebrated films - among them La Strada (1954) The Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), Otto e Mezzo (1963) and Amarcord (1973) - he created melancholy, magical worlds peopled by clowns, dreamers, conmen, trumpeters and werewolves. Fellini Lexicon explores the forms and substances, significances and insignificances, objects and shadows in Fellini''s work - the dance and music of his characters, the colour, light, and movement in his images. The Lexicon accompanies Fellini''s films, rather than seeking to possess them, taking pleasure in their incongruities, exaggerations, absurdities and surprises. The entries are reversible, overlapping, often unlikely, combining careful analysis of the films with a celebration of their richness. Fellini Lexicon is an original, delightful approach to Fellini''s work and to the practice of film criticism.

Federico Fellini (1920-93) was one of the most inventive of film-makers and he remains one of the best loved. Director of a whole series of celebrated films - among them La Strada (1954) The Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), Otto e Mezzo (1963) and Amarcord (1973) - he created melancholy, magical worlds peopled by clowns, dreamers, conmen, trumpeters and werewolves. Fellini Lexicon explores the forms and substances, significances and insignificances, objects and shadows in Fellini''s work - the dance and music of his characters, the colour, light, and movement in his images. The Lexicon accompanies Fellini''s films, rather than seeking to possess them, taking pleasure in their incongruities, exaggerations, absurdities and surprises. The entries are reversible, overlapping, often unlikely, combining careful analysis of the films with a celebration of their richness. Fellini Lexicon is an original, delightful approach to Fellini''s work and to the practice of film criticism.

An attempt to locate cinema alongside philosophy, painting, geography and travel in terms of a history of modernism. The book focuses on a collection of geographical and ethnographic films and photographs amassed by banker Albert Kahn, in the 1900s - arguably an instance of French modernism.

An attempt to locate cinema alongside philosophy, painting, geography and travel in terms of a history of modernism. The book focuses on a collection of geographical and ethnographic films and photographs amassed by banker Albert Kahn, in the 1900s - arguably an instance of French modernism.

. . . a keen and brilliant critical account of Pasolini''s films and writings . . . --ItalicaRohdie''s personal, idiosyncratic critical style is backed up by serious scholarly research, as the rich bibliography attests. This is one of the most original recent additions to the ever-growing literature on Pasolini. --Choice. . . refreshingly personal and full of unpredictable tangents. --Film QuarterlySam Rohdie has written a personal, wonderfully lucid account of Pier Paolo Pasolini''s cinema and literature.

. . . a keen and brilliant critical account of Pasolini''s films and writings . . . --ItalicaRohdie''s personal, idiosyncratic critical style is backed up by serious scholarly research, as the rich bibliography attests. This is one of the most original recent additions to the ever-growing literature on Pasolini. --Choice. . . refreshingly personal and full of unpredictable tangents. --Film QuarterlySam Rohdie has written a personal, wonderfully lucid account of Pier Paolo Pasolini''s cinema and literature.

Sam Rohdie's insightful and compelling analysis of Luchino Visconti's 1960 epic of modern urban life reveals the film as one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian cinema. Rocco tells the story of a family of peasants uprooted from their village in southern Italy, and forced to battle for existence in the industrial metropolis of Milan.Though fascinated by the social reality of modern Italy, Visconti had by this time thrown off the influence of the neorealist movement. He had developed a style all his own, enriched by his experience of directing opera for the stage. As a result, the characters in Rocco are no longer held in check by the naturalistic conventions of neorealism. Instead, they erupt on the screen with all the emotional power of heightened melodrama.The violent sexuality projected by stars Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Claudia Cardinale and the rest of Visconti's impressive cast was too much for the Italian censors, who cut several scenes. Rohdie discusses the film in terms of its 'passionate splendid realism', arguing that these two apparently opposing moods are held in balance rather than contradiction in the film, part of 'the very condition of the film's power - and grace.'

Sam Rohdie''s insightful and compelling analysis of Luchino Visconti''s 1960 epic of modern urban life provides reveals the film as one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian cinema. Rocco tells the story of a family of peasants uprooted from their village in southern Italy, and forced to battle for existence in the industrial metropolis of Milan.Though fascinated by the social reality of modern Italy, Visconti had by this time thrown off the influence of the neorealist movement. He had developed a style all his own, enriched by his experience of directing opera for the stage. As a result, the characters in Rocco are no longer held in check by the naturalistic conventions of neorealism. Instead, they erupt on the screen with all the emotional power of heightened melodrama.The violent sexuality projected by stars Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Claudia Cardinale and the rest of Visconti''s impressive cast was too much for the Italian censors, who cut several scenes. Rohdie discusses the film in terms of its ''passionate splendid realism'', arguing that these two apparently opposing moods are held in balance rather than contradiction in the film, part of ''the very condition of the film''s power - and grace.''