Comparative Cinema: Late and Last Things in Literature and Film

Paul Coates

May 2021 · Springer Nature

About this ebook

This book comprises what may be called exercises in ‘comparative cinema’. Its focus on endings, near-endings and ‘late style’ is connected with the author’s argument that comparative criticism itself may constitute an endgame of criticism, arising at the moment at which societies or individuals relinquish primary adherence to one tradition or medium. The comparisons embrace different works and artistic media and primarily concern works of literature and film, though they also consider issues raised by the interrelationship of language and moving and still images, as well as inter- and intra-textuality. The works probed most fully are ones by Theo Angelopoulos, Ingmar Bergman, Harun Farocki, Theodor Fontane, Henry James, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Chang-dong Lee, Roman Polański, Thomas Pynchon, and Paul Schrader, while the key recurrent motifs are those of dusk, the horizon, the labyrinth, and the ruin.

About the author

Paul Coates is an Emeritus Professor in the Film Studies Programme at Western University, Canada. He also taught at McGill, Georgia and Aberdeen. His books include studies of the novel, Symbolist poetry, Polish and German cinema, colour, the double, and the face in film.