From Doors to Screens

Reveals how objects and technologies function as discursive agents in film, with formal, narrative, and argumentative consequences.

From Doors to Screens treats filmic representations of non-filmic technologies as potentially meaningful intermedial encounters, wherein the objects and media represented interact with the basic characteristics of film in ways that affect cinematic expression, meaning-making, and argumentation. Focusing on doors, clocks, gramophones, and video screens in films by Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog, Michael Haneke, and others, the book reveals how these objects and technologies function as discursive agents, with formal, narrative, and argumentative consequences. Applying media theory to film analysis, the book proposes a novel methodology for the close reading of films, offering an alternative to more common symbolic and metaphorical interpretations.