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The renowned French philosopher Jacques Ranciere turns his critical eye to the history of modern cinema.

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In Film Fables Jacques Ranciere turns his critical eye to the history of modern cinema. Combining an extraordinary breadth of analysis with an attentiveness to detail born from an obvious love of cinema, Ranciere shows us new ways of looking at and interpreting film. His analysis moves effortlessly from Eisenstein´s and Murnau´s transition from theatre to film to Fritz Lang´s confrontation with television, from the classical poetics of Mann´s Westerns to Ray´s romantic poetics of the image, from Rossellini´s neo-realism to Deleuze´s philosophy of the cinema. The book also includes extended commentaries on the work of Hitchcock, Godard, Vertov and Bergman. Film Fables is essential reading for anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of the power and complexity of the cinematic form and it´s rich history.

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Translator´s Preface

Prologue: A Thwarted Fable

Part I: FABLES OF THE VISIBLE
Between the age of the theater and the television age
1. Eisenstein´s Madness
2. A Silent Tartuffe
3. From One Manhunt to Another: Fritz Lang Between Two Ages
4. The Child Director

Part II: CLASSICAL NARRATIVE, ROMANTIC NARRATIVE
5. Some Things To Do: The Poetics of Anthony Mann
6. The Missing Shot: The Poetics of Nicholas Ray

Part III: IF THERE IS A CINEMATOGRAPHIC MODERNITY
7. From One Image to Another? Deleuze and the Ages of Cinema
8. Falling Bodies: Rossellini´s Physics
9. The Red of La Chinoise: Godard´s Politics

Part IV: FABLES OF THE CINEMA, (HI)STORIES OF A CENTURY
10. Documentary Fiction: Marker and the Fiction of Memory
11. A Fable Without a Moral: Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories

Index

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A compelling study that will leave an enduring mark on film and media studies. Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA

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Rancière, Jacques
Jacques Rancière taught at the University of Paris VIII, France, from 1969 to 2000, occupying the Chair of Aesthetics and Politics from 1990 until his retirement.

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