num_pages: 432
description: Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs like Antonioni Fellini and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works Screening Modernism is the first comprehensive study of European art cinemas postwar heyday.Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s Andrs Blint Kovcss encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film Kovcs begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema. Exploring not only modernisms origins but also its stylistic thematic and cultural avatars Screening Modernism ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.
language: English
title: Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950-1980
publisher: University of Chicago Press