This book addresses some central issues in the philosophy of cinema: the role of expression, realism, authorship, theories of interpretation, the nature of narration, character identification and audiences' emotional responses. In developing theories of these phenomena, two broad themes emerge. The first is a concern with cinema as an art. The second is an argument that the cinematic medium plays a role in explaining and evaluating central features of cinematic works. In both respects, the book reveals a strong debt to classical film theory, which was concerned with the question of what makes film an art, and argued that the nature of the film medium plays a central role in understanding and evaluating films. Contemporary film theory lost interest in the question of whether film is an art and in some of its modes was little concerned with the nature of the film medium, assimilating it instead to semiotic phenomena. And some contemporary philosophers of film, notably Noël Carroll, have argued at length both that there is no role for medium-specific explanations in film and also that, partly as a result of this, we should abandon the attempt to construct grand film theory, and instead adopt piecemeal theorising. If the argument of this book is successful, the classical film theorists were much closer to the truth in holding that medium-specific explanations and evaluations, as well as a good degree of systematising theory about cinema, are possible.

The scope of the discussion of cinema in this book is broad.