The renowned French philosopher Jacques Ranciere turns his critical eye to the history of modern cinema.

In Film Fables Jacques Ranciere turns his critical eye to the history of modern cinema. Combining an extraordinary breadth of analysis with an attentiveness to detail born from an obvious love of cinema, Ranciere shows us new ways of looking at and interpreting film. His analysis moves effortlessly from Eisenstein's and Murnau's transition from theatre to film to Fritz Lang's confrontation with television, from the classical poetics of Mann's Westerns to Ray's romantic poetics of the image, from Rossellini's neo-realism to Deleuze's philosophy of the cinema. The book also includes extended commentaries on the work of Hitchcock, Godard, Vertov and Bergman. Film Fables is essential reading for anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of the power and complexity of the cinematic form and it’s rich history.

"A compelling study that will leave an enduring mark on film and media studies." - Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA

"A remarkable and beautiful book which, with immense elegance, sets aside the difficulties of film theory to recreate a liberating, critical and poetic history of cinema." - Adrian Rifkin, Professor of Visual Culture Media, Middlesex University, UK, and Editor of the Art History journal

"An important exploration of the tensions, ruptures and continuities that complicate the twists and folds of the history of cinema." - Geoffrey Whitehall, Theory & Event

"What really sets the book apart is Ranciere's gifts as a writer and fine-grain critic... The wide-ranging analyses emerge out of a truly intimate knowledge of the films, expressed with loving attention to the most minute of formal details--a hesitant gesture, a recurring sound, a glimmer of light. Like all the best books by philosophers on cinema, Ranciere encourages us at once to think and to see these images anew." - Paul Fileri in Film Comment