Description
Book SynopsisIn applying critical theory to Lang's Hollywood-made film noirs, melodramas, Westerns, and spy films, Humphries provocatively complicates auteur theory and revitalizes an unjustly neglected phase in the career of one of cinema's boldest visionaries.
Trade ReviewReynold Humphries dismisses any suggestion that Lang lost his artistic soul the moment he was sucked into industrial Hollywood, and he wastes no time trying to show that Lang's American films are 'about' innocence, guilt, and destiny. Instead, he goes beyond the meaning of the films... and dismantles the techniques which Lang used to serve up what he wanted us to see. What he offers is a detailed, sometimes minute analysis of how Lang presents us with images to look at... Lang does not simply emerge as a Mabuse who makes us see faces in the wallpaper, but as an artist who exploits his audience as a functional element of the filmmaking process. -- David Coward Times Literary Supplement Sheds new light on basic theoretical problems of the interrelationship between genres, classical film narrative, and audience perceptiveness. American Cinematographer
