Deathwatch

Genuinely exciting and brimming with original analytic insights organized around deft close readings of films from the dawn of cinema to the present. Given cinema's eternal fascination with death, coupled with film theory's rightfully obsessive need to explore the crossroads of photographic representation and the end of life, Combs's ambitious attempts to interweave these concerns are welcome and illuminating. -- Adam Lowenstein, University of Pittsburgh, author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film Combs shows that death in cinema is never just a random theme, but forms an essential aspect of a film's narrative structure and stylistics. He traces the cinematic portrayal of death from the pantomiming of silent films through the deadly flashbacks of film noir to the technological registering of death in post-sixties cinema, such as the death of the computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I consider this one of the most impressive works I have read in recent years. -- Tom Gunning, University of Chicago Combs shows that American cinema has come into its own by repeatedly returning to the elusive moment marking the transition from life to death through scenes of slow or un-sensational dying. Beautifully written and masterfully balanced between historical research and theoretical reflection, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in what cinema still has to tell us about our relationship to death and dying. -- Domietta Torlasco, Northwestern University