The Persistence of Hollywood Cinephile Moments, Classical Narrative and Blockbuster Authorship

"For over forty years, Thomas Elsaesser has been an indispensable guide to Hollywood's role in the history of popular art, and his gifts are on full display in this rich collection. The essays-imaginative, bold, and crisply written-are admirably sensitive to the ambivalent place of American filmmaking in global culture, from Hollywood's golden age to today's corporate moviemaking." -David Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Thomas Elsaesser demonstrates the power of movies by drawing on auteur studies (from Welles, Hitchcock, and Kubrick to Avatar), genres, industrial aesthetics, narrative analyses, social-symptoms, and the imperatives of corporate, global Hollywood. Throughout, Elsaesser makes the reader feel the tangled, affective energies of cinephilia. Beautifully intelligent-an essential book." -Edward Branigan, Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara