Arts of Cinema

In The Arts of Cinema, Martin Seel explores film’s connections to the other arts and the qualities that distinguishe it from them. In nine concise and elegantly written chapters, he explores the cinema’s singular aesthetic potential and uses specific examples from a diverse range of films—from Antonioni and Hitchcock to The Searchers and The Bourne Supremacy—to demonstrate the many ways this potential can be realized. Seel’s analysis provides both a new perspective on film as a comprehensive aesthetic experience and a nuanced understanding of what the medium does to us once we are in the cinema.

In The Arts of Cinema, Martin Seel explores film’s connections to the other arts and the qualities that distinguishe it from them. In nine concise and elegantly written chapters, he explores the cinema’s singular aesthetic potential and uses specific examples from a diverse range of films—from Antonioni and Hitchcock to The Searchers and The...