Flashbacks In Film

The flashback is a crucial moment in a film narrative, one that captures the cinematic expression of memory, and history. This author’s wide-ranging account of this single device reveals it to be an important way of creating cinematic meaning. Taking as her subject all of film history, the author traces out the history of the flashback, illuminating that history through structuralist narrative theory, psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, and theories of ideology. From the American silent film era and the European and Japanese avant-garde of the twenties, from film noir and the psychological melodrama of the forties and fifties to 1980s art and Third World cinema, the flashback has interrogated time and memory, making it a nexus for ideology, representations of the psyche, and shifting cultural attitudes.

Flashbacks in Film examines film flashback as a rich multimodal narrative device, analyzing the cognitive underpinnings of film flashbacks and the mechanisms that lead viewers to successfully comprehend them. Combining a cognitive film theory approach with the theoretical framework proposed by blending theory, which claims that human beings’ general ability for conceptual integration underlies most of our daily activities, this book argues that flashbacks make sense to the viewer, as they are specifically designed for the viewer’s cognitive understanding. Through a mixture of analysis and dozens of case studies, this book demonstrates that successful film flashbacks appeal to the spectator’s natural perceptual and cognitive abilities, which spectators exercise daily. This book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars interested in film studies, media studies, and cognitive linguistics.

The flashback is a crucial moment in a film narrative, one that captures the cinematic expression of memory, and history. This author’s wide-ranging account of this single device reveals it to be an important way of creating cinematic meaning. Taking as her subject all of film history, the author traces out the history of the flashback, illuminating that history through structuralist narrative theory, psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, and theories of ideology. From the American silent film era and the European and Japanese avant-garde of the twenties, from film noir and the psychological melodrama of the forties and fifties to 1980s art and Third World cinema, the flashback has interrogated time and memory, making it a nexus for ideology, representations of the psyche, and shifting cultural attitudes.

THE 21ST-CENTURY SCREENPLAY is the long-awaited, much-expanded successor to the author's internationally acclaimed SCRIPTWRITING UPDATED. Many books in one, it offers a comprehensive, highly practical manual of screenwriting from the classic to the avant-garde, from The African Queen and Tootsie, to 21 Grams, Pulp Fiction, Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Whether you want to write short films, features, adaptations, genre films, ensemble films, blockbusters or art house movies, this book takes you all the way from choosing the brilliant idea to plotting, writing and rewriting. Featuring a range of insider survival tips on time-effective writing, creativity under pressure and rising to the challenge of international competition, THE 21ST-CENTURY SCREENPLAY is essential reading for newcomer and veteran alike. 'A brilliant book. Linda Aronson is one of the great and important voices on screenwriting.' - Dr Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Script Great. 'A VERY WONDERFUL book. I love the strategies for plumbing the unconscious story mind. There's no other book that gives such an in-depth analysis of the bone structure for all these various kinds of narratives.' - Robin Swicord, Little Women, The Jane Austen Book Club, Memoirs of a Geisha.

As a 12-year-old, Richard Eyer costarred with Robby the Robot. In Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Paul Mantee's costar was a monkey named Barney who received billing as Mona, the Woolly Monkey. Actress Randy Stuart played the wife of The Incredible Shrinking Man. Alan Caillou wrote the original pilot outline for television's The Six Million Dollar Man. Asked to look over the final script six months later, he noticed that exactly one of his lines was being used (and that out of context) and that 27 writers were being given writing credit!Tom Weaver--author of Attack of the Monster Movie Makers, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes, They Fought in the Creature Features, and Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers--returns with a new collection of interviews that go behind the scenes of Golden Age science fiction, horror and fantasy filmmaking. Among the interviewed are Casey Adams, John Badham, Antony Carbone, Robert Clarke, Sidney Hayers, Lewis Allen, Gene Evans, Alex Gordon, Jackie Joseph, Ken Miller, John Moxey, Arthur Ross, Arianne Ulmer, Debra Paget and Edward Dmytryk.

Introduction: the way Hollywood told it -- The frenzy of five fat years; Interlude: Spring 1940: lessons from our town

Multiple Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Erik Bork (HBO's BAND OF BROTHERS) presents the seven fundamental characteristics of a great story in any medium. Writers tend to jump into the writing too quickly, without knowing they have a flawed central idea. This book is all about ensuring that doesn't happen!