Table of Contents

Reading ""The World Viewed"". Part I Preface: A Metaphysical Memoir. Part II Chapters 1-5: What Is Film? Part III Chapters 6-9: Film's Origins and History. Part IV Chapters 10-11: The End of the Myths. Part V Chapters 12-13: The World as a Whole. Part VI Chapters 14-15: Automatism. Part VII Chapters 16-18: Film and Theatricality. Part VIII Chapter 19: The Acknowledgement of Scilence. Appendix: Cavell's Philosophical Procedures and ""Must We Mean What We Say?"".

About the Author

William Rothman is a professor of motion pictures and director of the Graduate Program in Film Studies at the University of Miami. He is the author of the definitive Hitchcock--The Murderous Gaze (Harvard University Press, 1982), The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film History, Criticism and Aesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 1989), and Documentary Film Classics (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Marian Keane is an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Colorado.

Reviews

Stanley Cavell's The World Viewed is a masterpiece of philosophical reflection on the ontology and phenomenology of film, but, almost 30 years from its publication, it has proven difficult for some readers and for the field of Film Studies to assimilate. Now William Rothman and Marian Keane's commentary should make it possible for Cavell's book to take its appropriate place in our intellectual life. Their book is beautifully written, and not only corrects mistaken responses to Cavell but goes beyond exposition to interpretive commentary -this is a superb addition to the growing literature on Cavell's work.--Stanley Bates "Middlebury College"

To the extend that Cavell's training in philosophy and the Whitmanesque poetry of his prose stand as barriers between readers and his accomplishments, the careful explications of those accomplishments provided by Rothman and Keane are deeply hopeful signs that film study is finally ready for Cavell. It's high time.-- "Film Criticism"