Manchester University Press Aesthetic Evaluation and Film

This is the first book in the English language to present an in-depth, holistic examination of evaluative aesthetics and criticism as they apply to film. Organised around the explanation of key concepts, it illuminates connections between the work of philosophers, theorists, and critics, and demonstrates the evaluation of form through a close analysis of film sequences. The book’s central argument is that aesthetic evaluation should be flexibly informed by a cluster of concerns including medium, convention, prominence, pattern, and relation. Rather than privileging a particular theory or film style, it advocates and models a type of approach, attention, process, and discourse. This method is particularly effective for evaluating films from different places, periods, and genres, ensuring that the book will be a central text in the field for years to come. Aesthetic evaluation and film is suitable for students of films studies and philosophical aesthetics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and provides a framework for academics researching or teaching in the area. At the same time, the crisp and lucid style will make the book accessible to a wider readership. Andrew Klevan is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Barbara Stanwyck (2013), Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation (2005) and Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film (1999). Review 'This book is a Film as Film for our times. But it is also more than that. Film and cultural studies are increasingly focused on knowing the price of everything in their disciplinary turns towards media-industry studies, and a book that brings genuine and rigorous illumination to questions of value and the skills of evaluation is more necessary than ever. Andrew Klevan's study of evaluative aesthetics and the practices of aesthetic criticism and evaluation of film succeeds magisterially in its aim of being sufficiently general to apply to all types of films, as well as to cultural forms beyond cinema and screen media, too. It also affords great clarity, perspicacity and detail to its central concepts and cinematic concerns. The chapters on film-focused examples of aesthetic criticism - "the practical wing of evaluative aesthetics" - are more than worth the cover price alone. A complete and, above all, deeply useful tour de force on behalf of the film-critical endeavour.' Professor Catherine Grant, Birkbeck, University of London 'I cannot overestimate how important and timely this book is for the still-nascent discipline of film aesthetics. The study does a remarkable job in carving out a space for scholarly work in criticism and aesthetic evaluation, both in general and specifically in relation to film, setting out the essential concepts and principles of this field with incisive reference to key thinkers and critics. One particular strength is the clarity with which concepts are outlined and illustrated with examples of criticism. Another is the way those textual examples are concisely and deftly queried, refined or built upon, so that the book becomes not just an overview but a model of critical engagement in itself. This will make it essential reading for students taking classes in criticism and aesthetics, and a touchstone for academics working in the area of film style.' Dr Alex Clayton, University of Bristol 'Andrew Klevan's book Aesthetic Evaluation and Film is both audacious and careful... the virtues of the book in taking up the cause of aesthetics in writing, and doing so through informed, good faith assessments of debates in the philosophy of art, make this book one to admire for both its ambitions and its accomplishments.' Projections From the Inside Flap Aesthetic evaluation and film provides an in-depth, holistic examination of evaluative aesthetics and criticism as they apply to film. Organised around the explanation of key concepts, it illuminate