Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy has had a significant influence on film theory in recent years. Proposing a relationship between Levinasian ethics and film style, and bringing it into a productive dialogue with theories of performativity, this book explores this influence through three directorial bodies of work: those of the Dardenne Brothers, Barbet Schroeder and Paul Schrader. Discussing a range of films - including the Dardennes' Le Fils and The Kid with a Bike, Schroeder's Matresse and Reversal of Fortune and Schrader's American Gigolo and The Comfort of Strangers - Edward Lamberti demonstrates how film styles can perform a Levinasian ethics.

Proposing a relationship between Levinasian ethics and film style, and bringing it into a productive dialogue with theories of performativity, this book explores this influence through three directorial bodies of work: those of Barbet Schroeder, Paul Schrader and the Dardenne Brothers.

How do movies evoke and express ethical ideas? What role does our emotional involvement play in this process? What makes the aesthetic power of cinema ethically significant? Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film addresses these questions by examining the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience with the power to provoke emotional understanding and philosophical thinking. In a clear and engaging style, Robert Sinnerbrink examines the key philosophical approaches to ethics in contemporary film theory and philosophy using detailed case studies of cinematic ethics across different genres, styles, and filmic traditions. Written in a lucid and lively style that will engage both specialist and non-specialist readers, this book is ideal for use in the academic study of philosophy and film. Key features include annotated suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter and a filmography of movies useful for teaching and researching cinematic ethics.

For well over a century, going to the movies has been a favorite pastime for billions across the globe. But is film actually good for anything? This volume brings together thirty-six scholars, critics, and filmmakers in search of an answer. Their responses range from the most personal to the most theoretical—and, together, recast current debates about film ethics. Movie watching here emerges as a wellspring of value, able to sustain countless visions of "the good life." Films, these authors affirm, make us reflect, connect, adapt; they evoke wonder and beauty; they challenge and transform. In a word, its varieties of value make film invaluable.

Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom provides an account of Johansson’s persona, work and stardom, extending from her breakout roles in independent cinema, to contemporary blockbusters, to her self-parodying work in science-fiction. Screening Scarlett Johansson is more than an account of Johansson’s career; it positions Johansson as a point of reference for interrogating how femininity, sexuality, identity and genre play out through a contemporary woman star and the textual manipulations of her image. The chapters in this collection cast a critical eye over the characters Johansson has portrayed, the personas she has inhabited, and how the two intersect and influence one another. They draw out the multitude of meanings generated through and inherent to her performances, specifically looking at processes of transformation, metamorphosis and self-deconstruction depicted in her work.

Film & Ethics considers a range of films and texts of film criticism alongside disparate philosophical discourses of ethics by Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Lacanian psychoanalysts and postmodern theorists.

This volume looks at the significance and range of ethical questions that pertain to various film practices. Diverse philosophical traditions provide useful frameworks to discuss spectators’ affective and emotional engagement with film, which can function as a moral ground for one’s connection to others and to the world outside the self. These traditions encompass theories of emotion, phenomenology, the philosophy of compassion, and analytic and continental ethical thinking and environmental ethics. This anthology is one of the first volumes to open up a dialogue among these diverse methodologies. Contributors bring to the fore some of the assumptions implicitly shared between these theories and forge a new relationship between them in order to explore the moral engagement of the spectator and the ethical consequences of both producing and consuming films

Existing critical traditions fail to fully account for the impact of Austrian director, and 2009 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke’s films, situated as they are between intellectual projects and popular entertainments. In this first English-language introduction to, and critical analysis of, his work, each of Haneke’s eight feature films are considered in detail. Particular attention is given to what the author terms Michael Haneke’s ‘ethical cinema’ and the unique impact of these films upon their audiences. Drawing on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Stanley Cavell, Catherine Wheatley, introduces a new way of marrying film and moral philosophy, which explicitly examines the ethics of the film viewing experience. Haneke’s films offer the viewer great freedom whilst simultaneously imposing a considerable burden of responsibility. How Haneke achieves this break with more conventional spectatorship models, and what its far-reaching implications are for film theory in general, constitute the principal subject of this book.

Seeing the Light: Exploring Ethics Through Movies is an engaging and innovative approach to the study of philosophy and the development of moral reasoning skills. Features broad coverage of topics in ethics and moral reasoning Offers an innovative and imaginative approach to showing relevance of movies for ethical reflection Draws on a diverse selection of popular movies, foreign films, and documentaries to illustrate ethical dilemmas and character development on the big screen that has application to our lives Presents coverage of major ethical theories ranging from Ethical Egoism and Cultural Relativism to Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, Rawls' Justice Theory, Aristotle's Virtue Ethics, and Feminist Ethics Demonstrates how film is a powerful vehicle for sharpening skills in analysis and moral reasoning Includes accompanying website

An introduction to ethical theories and contemporary moral issues through film.