Camera Movements That Confound Us

For over half a century, Jonathan Rosenbaum has written about movies with the belief that cinema is a form of literature. He sees certain camera movements as mysterious pleasures to be explored through adventurous prose, rather than mere puzzles to be solved. In Camera Movements That Confound Us, an experimental investigation into a neglected yet essential part of moviegoing, this belief becomes a theme that invites both variations and speculations, ranging across the breadth of film history from the silent features of F. W. Murnau and Yasujirō Ozu, to the work of Robert Altman, Carl Dreyer, Alfred Hitchcock, Alain Resnais, Michael Snow and Orson Welles, including documentaries and essay films, and even moving beyond film history to take in both early live television dramas and contemporary TV news.