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The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema pp 21–44Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Haunting of Film Theory

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the understanding of cinema as a haunted medium by such writers as Maxim Gorky, Ricciotto Canudo, Antonin Artaud, Jean Epstein, Béla Balázs and Parker Tyler. It provides a study of the various ways these writers deploy supernatural tropes to characterize cinema’s specific characteristics, and connect them to uncanny subtexts of the early films themselves. It will also discuss and contextualize the re-emergence of the trope of “film-as-ghostly” in recent decades as part of the spectral turn.

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  1. Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Murray Leeder

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Leeder, M. (2017). The Haunting of Film Theory. In: The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58371-0_2

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