Critical Theory and Film Rethinking Ideology Through Film Noir

Fabio Vighi continues to be one of the finest thinkers today when it comes to cinematic theorizing. Coming from a firm grasp of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Vighi applies his formidable insights to cinema, this time to rethink the legacy of critical theory when it comes to film, reminding us of its importance as well as its limitations. -- Jan Jagodzinski, Professor of Visual art and Media Education, University of Alberta, Canada Fabio Vighi's Critical Theory and Film: Rethinking Ideology in Cinema is a kind of Everything You Wanted to Know about Theodor Adorno but were Afraid to Ask Film Noir. But it's also more than that. It makes the largest claims about ideology and the way society is structured and it marries them to the most detailed and nuanced readings of a series of not-so-well-known film noirs. And it shows that these two are exactly the same: that it is exactly in the detail of these films that we see most clearly the biggest and most important truths about our society. The book is a triumph of both film scholarship and theoretical speculation. -- Rex Butler, Lecturer in Art History, University of Queensland, Australia