Understanding Movies

Understanding Movies provides valuable insight into how movies communicate and convey meaning to their audiences through a unique network of language systems and techniques. In a readable, accessible, and sometimes humorous manner, Understanding Movies engages students in the fascinating language of film and helps further their appreciation and understanding of why and how movi...

Understanding Movies provides valuable insight into how movies communicate and convey meaning to their audiences through a unique network of language systems and techniques. In a readable, accessible, and sometimes humorous manner, Understanding Movies engages students in the fascinating language of film and helps further their appreciation and understanding of why and how movie watchers respond as they do to different films.

Organized around elements of film, the thirteenth edition of this market leading text provides students with a new way of looking at films that are familiar to them through contemporary coverage and a visually engaging presentation.

Louis Giannetti is a Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has taught courses in film, literature, writing, drama, and humanities. He has published many articles, both popular and scholarly, on political subjects, literature, and drama. In addition to being a professional film critic for several years, he has written about mo...

Louis Giannetti is a Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has taught courses in film, literature, writing, drama, and humanities. He has published many articles, both popular and scholarly, on political subjects, literature, and drama. In addition to being a professional film critic for several years, he has written about movies for such scholarly journals as Literature/Film Quarterly, The Western Humanities Review, and Film Criticism. Professor Giannetti is also the author of a book on cinema theory, Godard and Others: Essays on Film Form, published in both Britain and the Unites States. Giannetti’s other books include Masters of the American Cinema (Prentice Hall, 1981), a survey of American fiction films from the perspective of eighteen key figures. Flashback: A Brief History of Film, Sixth Edition (Allyn & Bacon, 2010), written with Scott Eyman, is a history organized by decade outlining the major events, trends, and important filmmakers and their work, with emphasis on the American cinema. Both books are copiously illustrated. Understanding Movies has been a bestselling text in all its previous editions, widely used in the United States and in such countries as Australia, Britain, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan.