Understanding Movies

Louis Giannetti is a Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has taught courses in film, literature, writing, drama, and humanities. He has published many articles, both popular and scholarly, on political subjects, literature, and drama. In addition to being a professional film critic for several years, he has written about movies for such scholarly journals as Literature/Film Quarterly, The Western Humanities Review, and Film Criticism. Professor Giannetti is also the author of a book on cinema theory, Godard and Others: Essays on Film Form, published in both Britain and the Unites States. Giannetti’s other books include Masters of the American Cinema (Prentice Hall, 1981), a survey of American fiction films from the perspective of eighteen key figures. Flashback: A Brief History of Film, Sixth Edition (Allyn & Bacon, 2010), written with Scott Eyman, is a history organized by decade outlining the major events, trends, and important filmmakers and their work, with emphasis on the American cinema. Both books are copiously illustrated. Understanding Movies has been a bestselling text in all its previous editions, widely used in the United States and in such countries as Australia, Britain, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan. 

Brief Contents

Photography
Mise en Scene
Movement
Editing
Sound
Acting
Dramatization
Story
Writing
Ideology
Critique
Synthesis: Citizen Kane