The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion (review)

THE END OF CINEMA?: A MEDIUM IN CRISIS IN THE DIGITAL AGE By Andre Gaudreault and Philippe Marion Translated by Timothy Barnard New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 240pp.REVIEWED BY JOHN W. LOCKEMost of members of film studies community have thought about and been concerned about film's change to digital. What will happen to film/ cinema? We have had conversations, but few of us have made it a priority as we allocate our thinking and research time.The End of Cinema? an important record of thinking of two scholars about cinema/digital/film nexus of issues. Particularly if you have worried about these issues and want to understand their history as well as to become current, this book an excellent introduction. For example, it contains a clear discussion of positions of Raymond Bellour and Jacques Aumont who hold views that each of us has heard expressed. For Gaudreault and Marion they represent classical cinephiles for whom movie-theatre projection ... defines (20). Cinema only exists when a film being projected in a dark movie theatre. Each has a book supporting their position, but first chapter of The End of Cinema? briefly states Bellour and Aumont positions and outlines comments by Dudley Andrew, James Lastra and Tom Gunning. It a thorough review of literature.Gaudreault and Marion have selected a dramatic metaphor, the death of to organize many of their points. The transition to sound cause of the death of silent which for them fourth death of cinema. This may come as a surprise for many readers who perhaps have viewed silent cinema as a smoothly developing history. What were three earlier deaths? It clear when reading this book that early history of film a particular area of research for authors. I will not attempt to summarize their decades of work in a few sentences, but a value for a reader finding this book about cinema that they may be led to read their work on early cinema. The idea that cinema had three deaths before coming of sound intriguing. Their work gives proper importance to changes such as transition to renting films rather than selling them and to another death in 1910s, which actually represents birth of cinema for authors.Although earlier periods of cinema are well discussed, focus of book is passage to digital (50). The authors consider whether this a revolution, a rupture, a mutation, a turn, or an upheaval and think their way through these descriptions. Their conclusion reasonable one of explaining distinctions, but deciding to use a range of terms (revolution, rupture, passage, turn, mutation) rather than being distracted by arguing for a single term. If their discussion had taken place a decade earlier, it would have been about a transition in progress, moving towards a start to finish fully cinema, but they are now able to title Chapter Two Digitalizing Cinema from Top to Bottom. Their book comes at right time.A particularly useful contribution of this book to quickly move reader deeper into discussions about and cinema. For example, they deal with questions such as whether application to film of Charles Sanders Peirce's concept of indexical becomes moot with images. Or, if normalization outside a movie theatre of ability to pause, or to quickly review an earlier image, represents a new standard way to view a film. There are also issues such as whether it could be that film projections and projections cannot be told apart versus position that images are characterized by a clinical coldness. The authors discuss publications on these questions, allowing reader to take an excursion into these topics or move ahead with book's development. …

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