Deleuze and Lola Montes

Description

Gilles Deleuze represents the most widely referenced theorist of cinema today. And yet, even the most rudimentary pillars of his thought remain mysterious to most students (and even many scholars) of film studies. From one of the foremost theorists following Deleuze in the world today, Deleuze and Lola Montes offers a detailed explication of Gilles Deleuze's writings on film - from his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985). Building on this foundation, Rushton provides an interpretation of Max Ophuls's classic film Lola Montes as an example of how Deleuzian film theory can function in the practice of film interpretation.

Richard Rushton is Senior Lecturer in Film at Lancaster University, UK. He is author of Cinema After Deleuze (2012), The Reality of Film (2011), The Politics of Hollywood Cinema (2012), and What is Film Theory? (co-written with Gary Bettinson, 2010).

Deleuze and Lola Montes offers an articulate and accessible introduction to Deleuze's theories as well as an instructive case study of how to use Deleuze's writings on cinema to illuminate particular films. * Jean Wyatt, Professor of English, Occidental College, USA * Deleuze and Lola Montes unpacks the intricate interweaving of Deleuze's theories of cinematic image, time, and subjectivity. The clarity of this work has the capacity to make the teaching of the Cinema books an enjoyable experience; no easy task, something anyone who has attempted to teach them will confirm. Furthermore, the work does so without smoothing over the complexities of Deleuze's thinking. This goes far beyond what one might expect from a text book. Rushton's scholarship will enable readers to understand the conceptual tenets of the Cinema books while guiding them through Deleuze's philosophical lineage from Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson. Along the way, the reader learns how Deleuze's rigorous interrogation of time and subjectivity, in addition to his response to and revision of these philosophers, is threaded through his film theory. Deleuze's Cinema books comprise an innovative and unique way of engaging in film texts. It will be exciting to see how, through this exceptional textbook, film students enter conversations with Deleuze that will reverberate in their theoretical thinking and efforts in cinematic image making. This is a fortunate opportunity for theory and practice to meet in the film studies classroom. * Hyon Joo Yoo, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Vermont, USA * A brilliant idea in popularizing Deleuze's theory through a masterpiece in European cinema. This may also lead to further work on Ophuls and Deleuze. * Fabio Vighi, Professor of Italian and Critical Theory, Cardiff University, UK *