Description
Book SynopsisThe first study to unpack American cinema’s long history of representing death
Trade ReviewGenuinely exciting and brimming with original insights. Given cinema's eternal fascination with death, coupled with film theory's obsessive need to explore the crossroads of photographic representation and the end of life, Combs's ambitious attempts to interweave these concerns are welcome and illuminating. -- Adam Lowenstein, author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film Combs shows that death in cinema is never just a random theme, but forms an essential aspect of a film's narrative structure and stylistics. I consider this one of the most impressive works I have read in recent years. -- Tom Gunning, author of The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity Beautifully written and masterfully balanced between historical research and theoretical reflection, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in what cinema still has to tell us about our relationship to death and dying. -- Domietta Torlasco, author of The Heretical Archive: Digital Memory at the End of Film
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: An Elusive Passage 1. Mortal Recoil: Early American Execution Scenes and the Electric Chair 2. Posthumous Motion: The Deathwork of Narrative Editing 3. Echo and Hum: Death's Acoustic Space in the Early Sound Film 4. Seconds: The Flashback Loop and the Posthumous Voice 5. Terminal Screens: Cinematography and Electric Death Coda: End(ings) Notes Bibliography Index
