Signs and Meaning in the Cinema

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First published in 1969, *Signs and Meaning in the Cinema* transformed the emerging discipline of film studies. Remarkably eclectic and informed, Peter Wollen's highly influential and groundbreaking work remains a brilliant and accessible theorization of film as an art form and as a sign system. The book is divided into three main sections. The first explores the work of Sergei Eisenstein as filmmaker, designer, and aesthetician. The second, which contains a celebrated comparison of the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks, is an exposition and defense of the auteur theory. The third formulates a semiology of the cinema, invoking cinema as an exemplary test case for comparative aesthetics and general theories of signification. Wollen's conclusion argues for an avant-garde cinema, bringing post-structuralist ideas into his discussion of Godard and other contemporaries.