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Introduction to Film Criticism: Major Critical Approaches to Narrative Film

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This book is designed as a supplementary textbook for an introductory film studies class. Its purpose is to introduce students to the major forms of film criticism and prepare them for writing their own film criticism. There is an appendix with sample essays, and the authors provide typical questions that students might address in their essays, but the emphasis is not on the nuts and bolts of writing a college essay. There are chapters on "journalistic," "humanist," "auteur," "genre," "social science," "historical," and "ideological/theoretical" approaches to writing about film. Each chapter gives a brief history of this type of writing, the basic premises, and the kinds of issues and questions addressed. It is not an interesting read. I love reading about film, but reading about writing on film is not especially interesting. The field of writing on film is vast, and this is a rather thin book, so the coverage seems somewhat superficial. The different categories of writing about film seemed rather arbitrary and awkward; there is a lot of overlap between categories. For a thin and rather boring book, the price of $99 (Amazon price $89) is ridiculous.

This is perhaps the best writing guide to film criticism presently available, but at $130.00 list I'd only recommend buying a used copy.

I wish this book were available at a reasonable price, but like most Longman titles it's ridiculously expensive. If it were cheaper, I'd require this for my own film classes. The only serious competitor, to my mind, is Timothy Corrigan's "A Short Guide to Writing about Film" (also an over-priced Longman title).

"An Introduction to Film Criticism" is divided into 7 chapters (each devoted to a different critical approach--including journalistic, humanist, auteurist, genre, social science, historical, and ideological/theoretical approaches) and an appendix with sample essays. Each chapter begins with a "capsule" summary identifying the audience, subject, function, writers, and publications typical of each approach. Every chapter proceeds to provide a short history/overview of each approach as well as guidelines and examples of writing within each area and varied discussions of each approach's aims and merits. The book concludes with an appendix containing samples of actual reviews and essays from each approach, a short chronology of film reviewing, criticism and theory, a bibliography and a glossary.

In short, this is an excellent book that covers virtually every topic an introduction to writing about film should contain--and then some. The only possible faults I could find with the text per se are that it contains very few illustrations and it is not as lively as it could be. But those minor criticisms aside, were it not priced at $130.00 I would heartily recommend it without reservation. As is, I can only recommend buying a used copy--of which, thankfully, there are many available (at this writing).

Indeed, I have to agree with the previous reviewer who thought the book was way overpriced. But I did find that the book's content was quite well done. It is a scholarly treatment of film analysis. Frankly, very highbrow and certainly not to every student's tastes. The different genres of analysis do inevitably overlap. But the methods are not those meant for a popular, wide audience of readers. Instead, the text has the feel of a graduate literary monograph. Which is an awkward fit to the perhaps more typical undergraduate style of having an appendix with sample essays.

If you do treat the book as a monograph, then its list price makes more sense.