7Film Theory

Abstract

Six exemplary works of film theory, published in 2018–19, receive consideration in this chapter: Johannes Riis and Aaron Taylor’s anthology Screening Characters: Theories of Character in Film, Television, and Interactive Media; Murray Pomerance’s Virtuoso: Film Performance and the Actor’s Magic; Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis’s edited collection When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited; Jeff Menne’s Post-Fordist Cinema: Hollywood Auteurs and the Corporate Counterculture; Wieland Schwanebeck and Douglas McFarland’s edited volume Patricia Highsmith on Screen; and Clara Bradbury-Rance’s Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory. The chapter is organized into three sections: 1. Character Engagement and Performance; 2. Revisiting the New Hollywood; 3. A Highsmith Hinge.