Description
Typically, films are suspenseful when they keep us on the edge of our seats, when glimpses of a turning doorknob, a ticking clock, or a looming silhouette quicken our pulses. Exemplified by Alfred Hitchcock's masterworks and the countless thrillers they influenced, such films captivate viewers with propulsive plots that spur emotional investment in the fates of protagonists. Suspense might therefore seem to be a curious concept to associate with art films featuring muted characters, serene landscapes, and unrushed rhythms, in which plot is secondary to mood and tone.
This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called "slow cinema." Rick Warner shows how slowness builds suspense through atmospheric immersion, narrative sparseness, and the withholding of information, causing viewers to oscillate among boredom, curiosity, and dread. He focuses on works in which suspense arises where the boundaries between art cinema and popular genres-such as horror, thriller, science fiction, and gothic melodrama-become indefinite, including Chantal Akerman's La captive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, Lucrecia Martel's Zama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy, and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return. Warner investigates the pivotal role of sound in generating suspense and traces how the experience of suspense has changed in the era of digital streaming. The Rebirth of Suspense develops a fresh theory, history, typology, and analysis of suspense that casts new light on the workings of films across global cinema.
About the Author
Rick Warner is associate professor and director of film studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks (2018).
Reviews
The Rebirth of Suspense offers a lucid and original contribution to the study of both suspense in general and how it operates in certain varieties of slow cinema. Warner adds significantly to understanding of different dimensions of suspense and hybrid effects in cinema that complicate oppositions between mainstream and arthouse approaches. -- Geoff King, author of Arthouse Crime Scenes: Art Film, Genre and Crime in Contemporary World Cinema
Rick Warner offers a provocative rethinking of suspense that gives us a new way of seeing works of slow cinema-and the aesthetic of slowness more generally. His juxtaposition of suspense and slow cinema is both counterintuitive and elegant, opening a productive avenue of aesthetic exploration with originality and insight. Sophisticated but accessible, this is an exciting work of film scholarship. -- Jordan Schonig, author of The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement
Drawing in imaginative fashion on contemporary affective, phenomenological, and eco-theoretical concepts, Warner's strikingly original study is a masterclass in applied theory. Grounded in exceptionally perceptive and compelling analyses of a wide variety of films and genres, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the operations of suspense (and much else besides) in cinema and beyond. -- Daniel Yacavone, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Moving Image Atmospheres and Felt Environments
In this beautifully written, richly nuanced book, Warner invites us to slow down: to feel the orchestration of suspense in its many forms. Redefining suspense through close, careful analyses of the atmospherics of global art cinema, Warner makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary film theory and burgeoning studies of atmosphere and environment. -- Saige Walton, author of Cinema's Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement
Book Information
ISBN 9780231212700
Author Rick Warner
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Series Film and Culture Series
This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called "slow cinema." Rick Warner shows how slowness builds suspense through atmospheric immersion, narrative sparseness, and the withholding of information, causing viewers to oscillate among boredom, curiosity, and dread. He focuses on works in which suspense arises where the boundaries between art cinema and popular genres-such as horror, thriller, science fiction, and gothic melodrama-become indefinite, including Chantal Akerman's La captive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, Lucrecia Martel's Zama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy, and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return. Warner investigates the pivotal role of sound in generating suspense and traces how the experience of suspense has changed in the era of digital streaming. The Rebirth of Suspense develops a fresh theory, history, typology, and analysis of suspense that casts new light on the workings of films across global cinema.
About the Author
Rick Warner is associate professor and director of film studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks (2018).
Reviews
The Rebirth of Suspense offers a lucid and original contribution to the study of both suspense in general and how it operates in certain varieties of slow cinema. Warner adds significantly to understanding of different dimensions of suspense and hybrid effects in cinema that complicate oppositions between mainstream and arthouse approaches. -- Geoff King, author of Arthouse Crime Scenes: Art Film, Genre and Crime in Contemporary World Cinema
Rick Warner offers a provocative rethinking of suspense that gives us a new way of seeing works of slow cinema-and the aesthetic of slowness more generally. His juxtaposition of suspense and slow cinema is both counterintuitive and elegant, opening a productive avenue of aesthetic exploration with originality and insight. Sophisticated but accessible, this is an exciting work of film scholarship. -- Jordan Schonig, author of The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement
Drawing in imaginative fashion on contemporary affective, phenomenological, and eco-theoretical concepts, Warner's strikingly original study is a masterclass in applied theory. Grounded in exceptionally perceptive and compelling analyses of a wide variety of films and genres, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the operations of suspense (and much else besides) in cinema and beyond. -- Daniel Yacavone, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Moving Image Atmospheres and Felt Environments
In this beautifully written, richly nuanced book, Warner invites us to slow down: to feel the orchestration of suspense in its many forms. Redefining suspense through close, careful analyses of the atmospherics of global art cinema, Warner makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary film theory and burgeoning studies of atmosphere and environment. -- Saige Walton, author of Cinema's Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement
Book Information
ISBN 9780231212700
Author Rick Warner
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Series Film and Culture Series
Details
Subtitle: |
Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema |
Series: |
Film and Culture Series |
Imprint: |
Columbia University Press |
