Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni claimed, three decades ago, that different conceptions of time helped define the split in film between European humanism and American science fiction. And as Garrett Stewart argues here, this transatlantic division has persisted since cinemaโs 1995 centenary, made more complex by the digital technology that has detached movies from their dependence on the sequential frames of the celluloid strip.
Brilliantly interpreting dozens of recent filmsโfrom Being John Malkovich, Donnie Darko, and The Sixth Sense to La mala educaciรณn and Cachรฉ โStewart investigates how their treatments of time reflect the change in media from filmโs original rolling reel to todayโs digital pixel. He goes on to showโwith 140 stillsโhow American and European narratives confront this shift differently: while Hollywood movies tend to revolve around ghostly afterlives, psychotic doubles, or violent time travel, their European counterparts more often feature second sight, erotic telepathy, or spectral memory. Stewart questions why these recent plots, in exploring temporality, gravitate toward either supernatural or uncanny apparitions rather than themes of digital simulation. In doing so, he provocatively continues the project he began with Between Film and Screen, breaking new ground in visual studies, cinema history, and media theory.