ABSTRACT
Sublime is a quality that a subject attributes to an object or idea when it is the occasion of a particular kind of sensation/emotion in that subject. The spectacular events of the Bible, which were additionally imbued with the sublime of divinity, had been frequently instanced as sublime by the eighteenth century, and become the subjects of painting that aimed at sublimity. The sublime is among the very few perennial forms of aesthetic experience that has received either a systematic description or an even partially successful explanation. The deliberate attempt to create sublime spectacle appears to have been originally an ambition of Italian cinema. Adventure films, war films, musicals, and even some comedies may be expensive, but those films in which the principal draw is the sublime are invariably so. Thus, the financial health of the film industry also determines how much sublimity may be about at any particular moment.
