The Rebirth of Suspense: Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema - Paperback
$63.00
by Rick Warner (Author)
Longlist, 2025 Moving Image Book Award, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation
Winner, 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Bronze Medal, 2025 Eiffel Award - Cinema Interpretation, Eiffel Foundation Typically, films are suspenseful when they keep us on the edge of our seats, when glimpses of a turning doorknob, a ticking clock, or a looming silhouette quicken our pulses. Exemplified by Alfred Hitchcock's masterworks and the countless thrillers they influenced, such films captivate viewers with propulsive plots that spur emotional investment in the fates of protagonists. Suspense might therefore seem to be a curious concept to associate with art films featuring muted characters, serene landscapes, and unrushed rhythms, in which plot is secondary to mood and tone. This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called "slow cinema." Rick Warner shows how slowness builds suspense through atmospheric immersion, narrative sparseness, and the withholding of information, causing viewers to oscillate among boredom, curiosity, and dread. He focuses on works in which suspense arises where the boundaries between art cinema and popular genres--such as horror, thriller, science fiction, and gothic melodrama--become indefinite, including Chantal Akerman's La captive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, Lucrecia Martel's Zama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy, and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return. Warner investigates the pivotal role of sound in generating suspense and traces how the experience of suspense has changed in the era of digital streaming. The Rebirth of Suspense develops a fresh theory, history, typology, and analysis of suspense that casts new light on the workings of films across global cinema.Author Biography
Rick Warner is associate professor and director of film studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks (2018).
Number of Pages: 312
Dimensions: 1.1 x 9.2 x 6.1 IN
Illustrated: Yes
Publication Date: September 17, 2024
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