Customer Reviews

How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, Multimedia: Language, History, Theory

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While not as concentrated, pragmatic, or reader-friendly as the title might suggest, Monaco's book is still the best comprehensive one-volume introduction to the aesthetics, politics, economics, theory, phenomenology, and industry of film. It's best seen as complementary to more basic introductory texts and detailed histories. Readers with a theoretical bent are most likely to appreciate its unique strengths.

This book is the most lucid textbook on film theory. While there are many other written textbooks on film theory, I have found the few other textbooks that I encountered either full of trivia or too watered down or almost like commentaries rather than text books.

This book examines cinema from the technical, evolutionary and cultural perspectives and also gives the most lucid exposition of the work of various film theorists like Metz, Mitry, Eisentein, Kracauer, Wollen and others.

Particularly relevant are the explanations of differences between montage and mise en scene approaches, types of montage and grand syntagmas of cinema (cinematic grammars).

It also sounds and reads like a deft synthesis of all that can be said about cinema rather than as a loosely strung collection of information that students might seek.

It also contains one of the most comprehensive and relevant bibliographies on film theory.

Monaco's "How To Read A Film" is an excellent introduction to film theory and it's concepts.

While we have all aquired a certain level of "cinematic language" (you can't help it, it's part of watching movies), Monaco provides a Dictonary and Thesaurus for those of us who want a deeper understanding of the film "experience" and the language to descibe it with.

Don't be daunted by the above paragraph, either -- Monoco is a good enough writer that it's much easier to read the book than to read *about* the book. Also an excellent companion piece to Cook's "History Of Narrative Film".

Monaco's How To Read A Film is a triumph in bringing together a very wide range of theoretical, social, aesthetic, political, economic, historical, and technical information and ideas about film. In the newer editions, he has also addressed the broader range of media in general. It has been considered the "bible" by many on film history and theory for three decades. As a young film student 25 years ago, this was a required text for me then and still is today in many important schools. I learned so much from it then, and amazingly, continue to take away insights which inform my own film-making even today.

Some of the comments from other reviewers here are a bit baffling, to be frank. I don't find his writing style to be irritating at all; just the opposite! I feel that one of Monaco's real strengths is his style; he deals with what could easily be rather dry material in a way that has me unable to turn the pages fast enough! He always keeps the subject very interesting and is quite economical and free of excesses and digressions in his delivery. If anything, I found myself wanting to know more at times. One reviewer states that Monaco lacks organization and drifts randomly between topics. He cannot be serious (??). Whatever you might come up with to be critical about, I don't think that anyone could possibly make that case. On the contrary, given the utterly ambitious amount of material that he is dealing with, I truly applaud him for the organizational skill and deft handling of the presentation of such a massive amount of information! I think that he brings it all together extremely well with three indexes and a remarkable bibliography to support a highly accessible and coherent structure of chapters. This same reviewer claims that "There is nothing about auteur theory" and "very little about editing." That's just flat wrong. My gosh, did he read the book?? Monaco deals directly with this in chapter five; he points out the rather dubious translation of Truffaut's "Politique des auteurs" as a "theory," and suggests the distinction that it is more of a "policy" with a fairly arbitrary critical approach, and goes on to elaborate on the difficulty with the notion of authorship. And as far as any discussion on editing? MONTAGE, my friend!! That's a central topic which is dealt with in great depth throughout the entire text!

There is perhaps only one area that I might raise a critical question. That concerns Monaco's complete understanding of semiotics and the rhetorical devices of literary theory. He, of course, applies them extensively to film analysis; but I did yearn for a bit more scholarship at times. For example, the term "trope" is defined in a great many texts as a rhetorical figure which represents the specific figures: metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, etc. But Monaco doesn't use it that way and it's a little confusing. It may simply be that these terms have evolved and have acquired nuanced meanings in film analysis.

For me personally, one of the wonderful things about the book is Monaco's honesty about the state of film criticism in current times as compared to the 1960s and 70s. He has the courage to admit what so many try to say in a backwards, camouflaged way. "Thumbs have replaced theories," says Monaco; today, "there is no one with an interesting theoretical ax to grind" like the prominent critical personas who established such a ferment of critical thinking and polemics thirty years ago; people like Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Manny Farber, and Molly Haskell, to name a few. Controversial? What's surprising is that it's not; but it's a vitally important opinion to understand. And Monaco supports his claim with a fascinating and well written book. I consider this an essential text; it completely changed how I approach film, both in how I make them and in how I read them.

James Monaco's knowledge of film and other media is almost scary! He discusses things like film emulsions, the evolution of the movie camera, the physiological nature of perception and the montage techniques of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, "underground films" of the 60's with such authority, you might think he has some mental wikipedia in his brains that he simply surfs for whatever topic he happens to be addressing. A book like this one could easily end up being a thin overview of visual media with no subject given adequate coverage, but regardless of what he's explaining, Monaco explains it in-depth and he has the added ability to explain difficult subjects in clear terms: read his analysis of structuralism and post-modernist film criticism, for example. It actually makes sense. Not that it made me enjoy the academic approaches, but at least I learned what they are (and they're not all that much). If I had to have one book on film studies, I'd pick this one, unless the version with the DVD is better. I haven't looked at it, but I imagine it would be great to see real excerpts from classic or modern films as they are analyzed.

I have no idea how this book has remained in print for over 20 years. It is, quite simply, ghastly. Monaco has a slick, laid-back style which might make some think he is being 'reader-friendly', but it conceals an almost total lack of organisation. Monaco simply chucks out thoughts and ideas at random, drifting aimlessly from one subject to the next. There is nothing about auteur theory, for example. There is very little about editing. If you want to sit down and learn in a structured way about the language of film, the history of film, or indeed anything about film this is not the book for you. It is only worthwhile as the kind of book you read random chunks from while on the toilet.

This book is well written with a very short but through art history as it relates to film as well as the film history in general. The book included many illustrations and photos to provide insight to film as a language and to the different period of film history. The film technology chapter is brief but complete with description of filmmaking major issues of image and sound. Overall good reference book with clear glossary as supporting materials.

When I tried to sign up for a community college "Intro to Film" course, I found that rather than being ubiquitous as I had assumed, such courses are frequently impossible to find these days. So I went looking for a book instead. My stumbling on "How To Read A Film" was a fortunate accident, it was just what I was seeking (and it didn't cost an arm and a leg).

The book ranges very widely to cover a lot of different angles you might not expect to find between a single pair of covers: film technology, related media technologies, artistic history, commercial history, analysis, theory, relation to literary techniques, and the place of film within the arts. I realized only later that the relatively breezy style covers a whole lot of depth. I was painlessly introduced to quite a bit of fairly arcane terminology: things like "mise en scene" of course, but did you know where the term "pull-down" in your DVD creator program came from?

(The author has made substantial revisions in new editions in order to keep this book current, even to the point of replacing whole chapters. If possible, it's worth getting a current edition; otherwise some topics may seem notably dated. Some editions also come with a DVD; if you want a DVD so the examples aren't just stills, you will have less choice of editions, and may not be able to choose the most current one. My comments refer to the Fourth Edition. )

I am so pleased with the purchase.
The book is in a great condition, not saying that it is also amazing in its content.
Highly recommended to read for those who are interested in film history and theory.
Moreover, the book arrived month and some days before the date of the estimate delivery, which I was very pleased to find out.

I had to buy this book for a Topics in Film: Independent Film class so I didn't have a choice in which book to buy. This book while has an interesting ideas, but overall this is an opinion of a person that is showed as a fact. We have film making students in our class and a lot of them disagree with some points that the author is talking about. While movie is subjective to begin with it, so is the discussion about the movies. There is a lot of historical information in there that it feels like this book is more for Art History rather then about movies. Overall not a very bad book and has some good information, just be prepared to read a lot.