The Subject of Cinema: The Rita Ray Memorial Lectures 1987

In an attempt to catch up with current thinking about the film image and the subject which creates it or apprehends it, Gaston Roberge defines film theory and discusses its basics before giving a lucid account of the shift from an idealist mode of thinking to a materialist one which occurred around the mid-sixties as part of a larger intellectual revolution, and led to a profound renewal of film theory under the joint influence of three main intellectual currents–structuralism, Marxism and feminism; and three main disciplines-semiotics, psychoanalysis and linguistics. While opening up the entire area of thinking, he offers a close study and explication of the ideas of Bazin, Eisenstein, Mitry and Metz; and illustrative analyses of several film classics approached in terms of the new methodologies.