Breaking the Fourth Wall: Direct Address in the Cinema
Author(s): Tom Brown (Author)
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication Date: 21 May 2012
Language: English
Print length: 208 pages
ISBN-10: 0748644253
ISBN-13: 9780748644254
Book Description
What happens when fictional characters acknowledge our ‘presence’ as film spectators? By virtue of its eccentricity and surprising frequency as a filmic device, direct address enables us to ask some fundamental questions of film theory, history and criticism and tackle, head-on, assumptions about the cinema as a medium. Brown provides a broad understanding of the role of direct address within fiction cinema, with focused analysis of its role in certain strands of avant-garde or experimental cinema, on the one hand, and popular genre traditions (musicals and comedies) on the other.
Editorial Reviews
Review
BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL is a probing study of the ways in which an actor or a character in a movie sometimes looks at the camera and addresses us in the audience. This is often taken simply to dispel the illusion, but in his book Tom Brown sensitively examines different forms of direct address and explicates how various and complex its effect can be. — Gilberto Perez, Sarah Lawrence College
BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL is a probing study of the ways in which an actor or a character in a movie sometimes looks at the camera and addresses us in the audience. This is often taken simply to dispel the illusion, but in his book Tom Brown sensitively examines different forms of direct address and explicates how various and complex its effect can be — Gilberto Perez, Sarah Lawrence College
Tom Brown is a lecturer in Film, with a research focus on the ‘classical’ cinema of France and Hollywood. Has co-edited two collections (Film Moments: Critical Methods and Approaches for Palgrave and Film and Television after DVD for Routledge) as well as publishing several book chapter and journal articles.
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