Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind

Description

In Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind, some of the scholars who have become essential for our understanding of Stanley Cavell’s writing on film gather to use his landmark contributions to help us read new films—from Hollywood and elsewhere—films that exist beyond his immediate reach and reading. In extending the scope of Cavell’s film-philosophy, we naturally find ourselves contending with it and amending it, as the case may be. Through a series of interpretive vignettes, our group effort situates, for the expert and novitiate alike, how Cavell’s writing on film can profitably enrich one’s experience of cinema generally and also inform how we might continue the practice of serious philosophical criticism of specific films mindful of his sensibility. The resulting conversations between texts, traditions, disciplines, and generations creates propitious conditions for discovering what it means to watch movies with Stanley Cavell in mind. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword: The Importance of Stanley Cavell for the Study of Film Introduction: The Seriousness of Film Sustained Part I: The Companionship of Film and Philosophy Chapter 1: Love and Class in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows Chapter 2: Lévinas, Cavell, and the Films of the Dardenne Brothers Chapter 3: The Specter of the Electronic Screen: Bruno Varela’s Reception of Stanley Cavell Part II: Recollecting and Remembering Chapter 4: The Pertinence of the Stars: Achieving Mortality in Little Did I Know and Only Angels Have Wings Chapter 5: In Praise of Cinema: Cavell, Arnaud Desplechin, and Telling What Counts in Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse  Part III: Rethinking Remarriage Chapter 6: Morality and Recognition: A Cavellian Reading of Elaine May’s A New Leaf Chapter 7: Remarriage Comedy, the Next Generation: In Bold Pursuit of Happiness Part IV: The Female Voice Heard Anew Chapter 8: Passionate Utterances: Cavell, Film, and the Female Voice Chapter 9: Cavell, Altman, Cassavetes: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman in A Woman Under the Influence and Nashville Part V: Contending with Conditions, Human and Otherwise Chapter 10: Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Cavell: Cinematic Syntax, Avoidance, and Acknowledgment Chapter 11: The Use and Abuse of Documentary Confessionals: Cavell, Žižek, and the Possibility of Justice in The Unknown Known and The Act of Killing Chapter 12: Pursuits of Happiness in the Time of War: On Borhane Alaouié’s Beirut: The Encounter Part VI: Visibility, Audibility, and Intelligibility Chapter 13: Chantal Akerman and Stanley Cavell: Viewing in La Captive and Reviewing in Moral Perfectionism Chapter 14: Contemplating the Sounds of Contemplative Cinema: Stanley Cavell and Kelly Reichardt Acknowledgments Contributors Index