Tom Gunning
Biographic Data
| ID | 295496 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Gunning |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Gunning |
| SIGNATURE | GUNNING T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Films of Fritz Lang
In this volume Tom Gunning examines the films of Fritz Lang not only as a stylistically coherent body of work, but as an attempt to portray the modern world through cinema. The world of modernity in which systems replace individuals is conveyed by Lang's mastery of cinematic set design, composition and editing. Lang presents not only a decades-long vision of cinematic narrative which can be compared to that of Alfred Hitchcock or Jean Renoir, but…
Technics: Media in the Digital Age
The Key Debates series was launched in 2010 with the aim of revisiting "the central issues that continue to animate thinking about film and audiovisual media," which we have now done across ten volumes.All of these have followed a pattern of reexamining foundational texts and issues, while also investigating new lines of transmission and interpretation.Our book series' dual interest in foundations and novel lines of inquiry is demonstrated by the…
Cine-genres redux
The concept of cine-genres, first introduced by Adrian Piotrovsky in a 1927 anthology of essays by Russian Formalist critics on cinema, has been used by a number of recent critics to describe genres that rely as much on their cinematic form as their narrative structure or iconic images. This essay argues for cine-genre as a way to acknowledge the unique cinematic aspect of groups of film. Cine-genres can be applied historically (as in early cinem…
Michel Mourlet's 'On a Misunderstood Art (1959): Plunging Back into the Screen
An introduction to Gila Walker’s translation of Michel Mourlet’s “On a Misunderstood Art (1959
‘Nothing Will Have Taken Place – Except Place’: The Unsettling Nature of Camera Movement
Viktor Shklovsky’s Ostrannenie and the ‘Hermeneutics of wonder’
In this conversation, Tom Gunning and Annie van den Oever return to Viktor Shklovsky’s notion of ostrannenie (making strange), a neologism coined in what turned out to become a modern art theory that was developed by the young Shklovsky in the midst of the great popularity of film shows in Russia in 1913. Tom Gunning is a film historian and a theorist who wrote a series of foundational texts about early cinema that helped establish the ‘hermeneut…
Finding the Way: Films Found on a Scrap Head
Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practi…
Finding the way: Films found on a scrap heap
Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practi…
Miriam Hansen's Preface and Epilogue: Mourning and Media
Relating Sigmund Freud's essay “Mourning and Melancholia” and Walter Benjamin's work on the Trauerspiel as well as his discussion of cinema in “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” Gunning discusses the idea of testing as part of cinema's relation to mourning in modernity. Rather than view cinema as a simulacrum of reality, he proposes it as a way to work through our separation from things and their aura. Benjamin's d…
Animating the Nineteenth Century: Bringing Pictures to Life (or Life to Pictures?)
The Art of Succession: Reading, Writing, and Watching Comics
This Is Called Moving: A Critical Poetics of Film
Chaplin and the body of modernity
This article outlines the connections between Chaplin’s performing body, his comic style and its interrelationship with the forces of modernity. It argues for a need to recover Chaplin, not as an enshrined genius, but in his original energy, as a controversial modern artist whose art not only delighted and entertained, but also helped transform the world he was born into. Chaplin’s work offered something new; he laughed the world into a new physi…
Invisible Cities, Visible Cinema: Illuminating Shadows in Late Film Noir
The visible, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty has taught us, always involves the invisible; what we see entails a zone of the not-seen.1 Seventies film theory too frequently thought of cinema as exemplifying the glare (or frenzy) of the visible, devoted to the lure of visual mastery. This led to a simplification of cinema’s ideological role as propping up the viewer’s investment in a visual image as the product of a gaze. However, such analysis too often…
Uncanny Reflections, Modern Illusions: Sighting the Modern Optical Uncanny
Is there a specifically modern uncanny? Freud’s famous essay relates the uncanny to the timeless processes of the unconscious, and even refers back to archaic modes of thought — animism, magical powers of consciousness, the return of the dead, the existence of doubles. 2 But while I would never claim that the uncanny is exclusively a modern phenomenon, I would certainly claim there is a modern uncanny. Much of what we think of as uncanny entails …
Early Cinema and the Variety of Moving Images
To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision
January 01 2007 To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Tom Gunning Online Issn: 1536-0105 Print Issn: 1526-3819 © 2007 by Grey Room, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.2007 Grey Room (2007) (26): 94–127. https://doi.org/10.1162/grey.2007.1.26.94 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter Link…
Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality
tom gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Cinema and Media. He is author of two books, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of America Narrative Film (University of Illinois Press, 1991) and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (British Film Institute, 2000), as well as over a hundred articles on…
Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel
Lynx-Eyed Detectives and Shadow Bandits: Visuality and Eclipse in French Detective Stories and Films before WWI
A little light on a dark subject
The work of film analysis: Systems, fragments, alternation
The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective
Research Article| February 01 2003 The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 105–130. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-105 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site …
The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity
In this remarkable new study, the renowned historian and theorist of early cinema turns his attention to the work of Fritz Lang, proposing new readings of the entire output of one of cinema's foremost directors. Gunning examines the films not only as a stylistically coherent body of work, but as an attempt to portray the modern world through cinema. world of modernity in which systems replace individuals is conveyed by Lange's mastery of cinemati…
Visual Culture Questionnaire
1. It has been suggested that the interdisciplinary project of is no longer organized on the model of (as were the disciplines of art history, architectural history, film history, etc.) but on the model of anthropology. Hence, it is argued by some that visual culture is in an eccentric (even, at times, antagonistic) position with regard to the new art history with its social-historical and semiotic imperatives and models of context and text
Visual Culture Questionnaire
1. It has been suggested that the interdisciplinary project of is no longer organized on the model of (as were the disciplines of art history, architectural history, film history, etc.) but on the model of anthropology. Hence, it is argued by some that visual culture is in an eccentric (even, at times, antagonistic) position with regard to the new art history with its social-historical and semiotic imperatives and models of context and text
Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality
tom gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Cinema and Media. He is author of two books, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of America Narrative Film (University of Illinois Press, 1991) and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (British Film Institute, 2000), as well as over a hundred articles on…
The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective
Research Article| February 01 2003 The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 105–130. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-105 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site …
"Primitive" Cinema: A Frame-up? Or the Trick's on Us
The Art of Succession: Reading, Writing, and Watching Comics
Heard over the phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde tradition of the terrors of technology
Journal Article Heard over the phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde tradition of the terrors of technology Get access Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 32, Issue 2, Summer 1991, Pages 184–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/32.2.184 Published: 01 July 1991
To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision
January 01 2007 To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Tom Gunning Online Issn: 1536-0105 Print Issn: 1526-3819 © 2007 by Grey Room, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.2007 Grey Room (2007) (26): 94–127. https://doi.org/10.1162/grey.2007.1.26.94 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter Link…
Chaplin and the body of modernity
This article outlines the connections between Chaplin’s performing body, his comic style and its interrelationship with the forces of modernity. It argues for a need to recover Chaplin, not as an enshrined genius, but in his original energy, as a controversial modern artist whose art not only delighted and entertained, but also helped transform the world he was born into. Chaplin’s work offered something new; he laughed the world into a new physi…
"Primitive" Cinema: A Frame-up? Or the Trick's on Us
The Cinema of Attractions Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde
Writing in 1922, flushed with the excitement of seeing Abel Gance’s La Roue, Fernand Léger tried to define something of the radical possibilities of the cinema. The potential of the new art did not lie in ‘imitating the movements of nature’ or in ‘the mistaken path’ of its resemblance to theatre. It
Heard over the phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde tradition of the terrors of technology
Journal Article Heard over the phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde tradition of the terrors of technology Get access Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 32, Issue 2, Summer 1991, Pages 184–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/32.2.184 Published: 01 July 1991
De l'histoire du cinema. Methode historique et histoire du cinema
Visual Culture Questionnaire
1. It has been suggested that the interdisciplinary project of is no longer organized on the model of (as were the disciplines of art history, architectural history, film history, etc.) but on the model of anthropology. Hence, it is argued by some that visual culture is in an eccentric (even, at times, antagonistic) position with regard to the new art history with its social-historical and semiotic imperatives and models of context and text
The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity
In this remarkable new study, the renowned historian and theorist of early cinema turns his attention to the work of Fritz Lang, proposing new readings of the entire output of one of cinema's foremost directors. Gunning examines the films not only as a stylistically coherent body of work, but as an attempt to portray the modern world through cinema. world of modernity in which systems replace individuals is conveyed by Lange's mastery of cinemati…
A little light on a dark subject
The work of film analysis: Systems, fragments, alternation
The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective
Research Article| February 01 2003 The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin's Optical Detective Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 105–130. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-105 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site …
Lynx-Eyed Detectives and Shadow Bandits: Visuality and Eclipse in French Detective Stories and Films before WWI
Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel
To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision
January 01 2007 To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision Tom Gunning Tom Gunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Tom Gunning Online Issn: 1536-0105 Print Issn: 1526-3819 © 2007 by Grey Room, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.2007 Grey Room (2007) (26): 94–127. https://doi.org/10.1162/grey.2007.1.26.94 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter Link…
Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality
tom gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Cinema and Media. He is author of two books, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of America Narrative Film (University of Illinois Press, 1991) and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (British Film Institute, 2000), as well as over a hundred articles on…
Uncanny Reflections, Modern Illusions: Sighting the Modern Optical Uncanny
Is there a specifically modern uncanny? Freud’s famous essay relates the uncanny to the timeless processes of the unconscious, and even refers back to archaic modes of thought — animism, magical powers of consciousness, the return of the dead, the existence of doubles. 2 But while I would never claim that the uncanny is exclusively a modern phenomenon, I would certainly claim there is a modern uncanny. Much of what we think of as uncanny entails …
Early Cinema and the Variety of Moving Images
Invisible Cities, Visible Cinema: Illuminating Shadows in Late Film Noir
The visible, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty has taught us, always involves the invisible; what we see entails a zone of the not-seen.1 Seventies film theory too frequently thought of cinema as exemplifying the glare (or frenzy) of the visible, devoted to the lure of visual mastery. This led to a simplification of cinema’s ideological role as propping up the viewer’s investment in a visual image as the product of a gaze. However, such analysis too often…
Chaplin and the body of modernity
This article outlines the connections between Chaplin’s performing body, his comic style and its interrelationship with the forces of modernity. It argues for a need to recover Chaplin, not as an enshrined genius, but in his original energy, as a controversial modern artist whose art not only delighted and entertained, but also helped transform the world he was born into. Chaplin’s work offered something new; he laughed the world into a new physi…
This Is Called Moving: A Critical Poetics of Film
Finding the Way: Films Found on a Scrap Head
Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practi…
Finding the way: Films found on a scrap heap
Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practi…
Miriam Hansen's Preface and Epilogue: Mourning and Media
Relating Sigmund Freud's essay “Mourning and Melancholia” and Walter Benjamin's work on the Trauerspiel as well as his discussion of cinema in “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” Gunning discusses the idea of testing as part of cinema's relation to mourning in modernity. Rather than view cinema as a simulacrum of reality, he proposes it as a way to work through our separation from things and their aura. Benjamin's d…
Animating the Nineteenth Century: Bringing Pictures to Life (or Life to Pictures?)
The Art of Succession: Reading, Writing, and Watching Comics
‘Nothing Will Have Taken Place – Except Place’: The Unsettling Nature of Camera Movement
Viktor Shklovsky’s Ostrannenie and the ‘Hermeneutics of wonder’
In this conversation, Tom Gunning and Annie van den Oever return to Viktor Shklovsky’s notion of ostrannenie (making strange), a neologism coined in what turned out to become a modern art theory that was developed by the young Shklovsky in the midst of the great popularity of film shows in Russia in 1913. Tom Gunning is a film historian and a theorist who wrote a series of foundational texts about early cinema that helped establish the ‘hermeneut…
Art (22 works) · Art history (18 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (18 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Aesthetics (11 works) · Visual arts (9 works) · Movie theater (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · History (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works)