Light Thoughts

Light Thoughts is about the interaction of thought between the spectator and the film in cinema; not just a matter of describing the play of a film as a thought process, but rather of formulating ideas about this interaction through detailed analysis of what is actually seen and heard in the cinema.

The chapters include explorations of: gaffes in performance, harmonized activity, and so-called “unison” action; the sale of gender roles and attitudes surreptitiously; the viewer’s way of (relentlessly) traveling forward through film; human gesture and the variant forms of comprehension it inspires; the cinematic onlooker—she who sees another person onscreen while we watch her seeing without knowing in any way how and what she takes in; the editorial technique of making the viewer wait for an explanation of what is being seen now; to long discussions of Antonioni, pointing to his camera movement in space and our affiliation with it; the problem of secrecy in cinematic narrative; the function and variability of the close-up insert; the problem of reading the image and handing the obvious; various confusions of narrative time; surveillance, doubt, and point of view; expression, meaning, and the face; and much more.

This book offers a series of original analyses of techniques used in films, which function as the basis for enhancing our understanding of cinema – if not as a medium specifically, then certainly as a medium used for telling stories and conveying the complexities of human character.

Author Biography

Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto, Canada, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Edge of the Screen (Bloomsbury, 2024); Uncanny Cinema: Agonies of the Viewing Experience (Bloomsbury, 2022); Color It True: Impressions of Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022); The Film Cheat: Film Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (Bloomsbury, 2020); and many others.