Making-Over Mise-en-Scene

That these three books have been published so close together is fortuitous. Each has arrived within a year of the others, and two form part of the exciting new series Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, coedited by John Gibbs. Although Gibbs’s book is not a part of the series, it is a compelling study of the critical tradition in which that series fi nds its roots. These books speak to one another to a remarkable extent, addressing, from distinct directions of interest, a set of shared concerns with the practice and value of detailed, style-based fi lm criticism. Refl ecting the books’ interconnections, the order in which I examine them below is not arbitrary. I hope the structure rather embodies something like a guide as to how these important new works may be usefully read alongside one another. Each bears vital insights into the value of style-based expressive criticism and its continuing importance to contem-porary fi lm studies, where the practice of criticism sits within an increasingly heterogeneous and methodologically diverse fi eld.