John Belton
Biographic Data
| ID | 1021259 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Belton |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Belton |
| SIGNATURE | BELTON J |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Commodification of Romanticism
This essay looks at the relationship between the two narrative registers of Max Ophüls's Lola Montès (France, 1955)—the staging of circus attractions in the present and the repeated flashbacks to the past—in terms of the way in which the circus exploits Lola's associations with Romanticism, transforming her into a commodity to be marketed to a modern mass theatrical audience. At the same time, this essay argues that the film questions its own use…
If film is dead, what is cinema
This essay revisits debates concerning the end of cinema from the vantage point of the history of technological change in the cinema, ‘crisis historiography’, and apparatus theory. Its goal is to situate digital cinema within a larger continuity of technological development within the cinema, to view cinema in terms of an ongoing identity crisis in which the notion of ‘what cinema is’ is constantly being redefined, and to explore ways in which tr…
Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window
Re-Imagining American Communities
Re-Imagining American Communities:Hollywood, Hawks, and Ford in 1939 John Belton Classical Hollywood cinema is a character-centered cinema; its narratives are driven by dramatic agents in pursuit of clearly defined goals; narrative progress is built around the central character encountering and overcoming a series of obstacles to those goals; and closure occurs with that character's unambiguous attainment or failure to attain those goals (Bordwel…
Hitchcock and the Classical Paradigm
Digital Cinema
April 01 2002 Digital Cinema: A False Revolution John Belton John Belton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information John Belton Online Issn: 1536-013X Print Issn: 0162-2870 © 2002 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 October (2002) (100): 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1162/016228702320218411 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon V…
Reply to Bill Nichols
Our original statement encouraged the use of film-on-film (rather than film-onvideo) as the primary medium of classroom presentation of original motion picture films; it did not, as Nichols seems to imply, discourage the use of filmon-video as a secondary mode of presentation. Videotapes and laser discs can be quite successful pedagogic tools. It is only when educators are forced to choose between film-on-film and film-on-video that problems aris…
Reply to Royal Brown
Turner is also the hero behind many of the glories appearing under the MGM/ UA aegis. Few if any of these color-restored, retrieved-footage, proper (or nearly proper)-aspect-ratioed movies will make it to 16mm, no matter how many financially harried administrators are urged to up rental budgets (a major problem well before video came along). The 16mm industry will continue to rent, lease, and sell fewer and fewer titles in worse and worse conditi…
Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown
What the detective story represents, of which social formations and tendencies it is the expression, this we all know.... [It embodies] certain aspects of bourgeois ideology ..., serving as one of the most pointed forms of expression of private-property ideology (Eisenstein 128). [Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus] portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, and brings it slowly to light by skillfully prolonged inqui…
SCS Statement on Creative Rights
The Directors Guild of America, the American Society of Cinematographers, and the American Film Institute have, during the past year, voiced their opposition to the colorization of black and white films for release on television. Representatives of the DGA and other members of the film industry have, more recently, testified on this issue before your Subcommittee on Technology and the Law. The Society for Cinema Studies praises this stand taken b…
The Space of Rear Window
In Book III of the Republic, Plato identifies two distinct and opposed modes of representation-imitation (or mimesis) and simple narration (or diegesis).1 Contemporary literary theory has inherited this distinction in the form of mimetic and diegetic theories of narration, which range in sophistication from the simple opposition of drama, which shows a narrative, and the novel, which it, to the more complex narrative theories of Wayne Booth and G…
CinemaScope and Historical Methodology
Like the writing of any history, the writing of a history of CinemaScope necessarily begins with a consideration of basic principles of historiography and historical methodology. Decisions about where to begin or end the history, what events to include or omit, what factors to isolate as determining forces, and how to present historical changethat is, how to describe it in words for others--must be made before any writing begins. The task is made…
Digital Cinema
April 01 2002 Digital Cinema: A False Revolution John Belton John Belton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information John Belton Online Issn: 1536-013X Print Issn: 0162-2870 © 2002 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 October (2002) (100): 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1162/016228702320218411 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon V…
The Commodification of Romanticism
This essay looks at the relationship between the two narrative registers of Max Ophüls's Lola Montès (France, 1955)—the staging of circus attractions in the present and the repeated flashbacks to the past—in terms of the way in which the circus exploits Lola's associations with Romanticism, transforming her into a commodity to be marketed to a modern mass theatrical audience. At the same time, this essay argues that the film questions its own use…
CinemaScope and Historical Methodology
Like the writing of any history, the writing of a history of CinemaScope necessarily begins with a consideration of basic principles of historiography and historical methodology. Decisions about where to begin or end the history, what events to include or omit, what factors to isolate as determining forces, and how to present historical changethat is, how to describe it in words for others--must be made before any writing begins. The task is made…
SCS Statement on Creative Rights
The Directors Guild of America, the American Society of Cinematographers, and the American Film Institute have, during the past year, voiced their opposition to the colorization of black and white films for release on television. Representatives of the DGA and other members of the film industry have, more recently, testified on this issue before your Subcommittee on Technology and the Law. The Society for Cinema Studies praises this stand taken b…
The Space of Rear Window
In Book III of the Republic, Plato identifies two distinct and opposed modes of representation-imitation (or mimesis) and simple narration (or diegesis).1 Contemporary literary theory has inherited this distinction in the form of mimetic and diegetic theories of narration, which range in sophistication from the simple opposition of drama, which shows a narrative, and the novel, which it, to the more complex narrative theories of Wayne Booth and G…
CinemaScope and Historical Methodology
Like the writing of any history, the writing of a history of CinemaScope necessarily begins with a consideration of basic principles of historiography and historical methodology. Decisions about where to begin or end the history, what events to include or omit, what factors to isolate as determining forces, and how to present historical changethat is, how to describe it in words for others--must be made before any writing begins. The task is made…
Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown
What the detective story represents, of which social formations and tendencies it is the expression, this we all know.... [It embodies] certain aspects of bourgeois ideology ..., serving as one of the most pointed forms of expression of private-property ideology (Eisenstein 128). [Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus] portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, and brings it slowly to light by skillfully prolonged inqui…
Reply to Bill Nichols
Our original statement encouraged the use of film-on-film (rather than film-onvideo) as the primary medium of classroom presentation of original motion picture films; it did not, as Nichols seems to imply, discourage the use of filmon-video as a secondary mode of presentation. Videotapes and laser discs can be quite successful pedagogic tools. It is only when educators are forced to choose between film-on-film and film-on-video that problems aris…
Reply to Royal Brown
Turner is also the hero behind many of the glories appearing under the MGM/ UA aegis. Few if any of these color-restored, retrieved-footage, proper (or nearly proper)-aspect-ratioed movies will make it to 16mm, no matter how many financially harried administrators are urged to up rental budgets (a major problem well before video came along). The 16mm industry will continue to rent, lease, and sell fewer and fewer titles in worse and worse conditi…
Digital Cinema
April 01 2002 Digital Cinema: A False Revolution John Belton John Belton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information John Belton Online Issn: 1536-013X Print Issn: 0162-2870 © 2002 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology2002 October (2002) (100): 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1162/016228702320218411 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon V…
Hitchcock and the Classical Paradigm
Re-Imagining American Communities
Re-Imagining American Communities:Hollywood, Hawks, and Ford in 1939 John Belton Classical Hollywood cinema is a character-centered cinema; its narratives are driven by dramatic agents in pursuit of clearly defined goals; narrative progress is built around the central character encountering and overcoming a series of obstacles to those goals; and closure occurs with that character's unambiguous attainment or failure to attain those goals (Bordwel…
Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window
If film is dead, what is cinema
This essay revisits debates concerning the end of cinema from the vantage point of the history of technological change in the cinema, ‘crisis historiography’, and apparatus theory. Its goal is to situate digital cinema within a larger continuity of technological development within the cinema, to view cinema in terms of an ongoing identity crisis in which the notion of ‘what cinema is’ is constantly being redefined, and to explore ways in which tr…
The Commodification of Romanticism
This essay looks at the relationship between the two narrative registers of Max Ophüls's Lola Montès (France, 1955)—the staging of circus attractions in the present and the repeated flashbacks to the past—in terms of the way in which the circus exploits Lola's associations with Romanticism, transforming her into a commodity to be marketed to a modern mass theatrical audience. At the same time, this essay argues that the film questions its own use…
Art (11 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (9 works) · Law (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Art history (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Humanities (4 works) · Movie theater (4 works)