Classical Antiquity and the Cinematic Imagination [Hardcover]

The first systematic study of classical literature and arts to explain their close affinities with modern visual technologies and media.Demonstrates the affinities between antiquity and today by interpreting several themes in classical literature and arts and illustrating these with numerous films, ranging from silents, classic Hollywood, and European popular and art films to documentaries, animation, and digital media and special effects.Demonstrates the affinities between antiquity and today by interpreting several themes in classical literature and arts and illustrating these with numerous films, ranging from silents, classic Hollywood, and European popular and art films to documentaries, animation, and digital media and special effects.This book aims to enhance our appreciation of the modernity of the classical cultures and, conversely, of cinema's debt to ancient Greece and Rome. It explores filmic perspectives on the ancient verbal and visual arts and applies what is often referred to as pre-cinema and what Sergei Eisenstein called cinematism: that paintings, statues, and literature anticipate modern visual technologies. The motion of bodies depicted in static arts and the vividness of epic ecphrases point to modern features of storytelling, while Plato's Cave Allegory and Zeno's Arrow Paradox have been related to film exhibition and projection since the early days of cinema. The book additionally demonstrates the extensive influence of antiquity on an age dominated by moving-image media, as with stagings of Odysseus' arrow shot through twelve axes or depictions of the Golden Fleece. Chapters interpret numerous European and American silent and sound films and some television productions and digital videos.Part I. Prolegomena Leptomerestera: 1. Fade-in; Part II. Progymnasmata  Ways of Seeing: 2. Douris' Jason: reckless interpretations and the ongoing moment; 3. Classical cinematism; Part III. Complex Cinematism: 4. Motion images in ecphrases; 5. Shadows and cal£Ì