ABSTRACT
If you’ve picked up this book to learn something about what it means to study film, you already know in large measure what cinema is: you’ve been watching movies since you first toddled out to the television set, or since you braved your first excursion to a multiplex matinee. If you’re old enough, you may have witnessed formats come and go. Perhaps you were thrilled by your first chance to watch a beloved film at home on videocassette, rewinding the tape over and over to watch Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain or Greta Garbo unleashing her famous first spoken line in Anna Christie (Jacques Feyder, 1931): “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.” DVDs, now repackaged with all of the “extras” that persuaded us to replace those VHS tapes, are also going the way of compact discs (CDs), right into the dustbin that receives the detritus of digital culture. We now live in a world in which cinema streams in bits onto our computer and mobile device screens, as much as it still lights up the screens of our theaters in malls and neighborhoods.
