The University of California Press  is pleased to announce the publication of:



Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging



David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies and 

Hilldale Professor of Humanities at the University of 

Wisconsin-Madison. Among his books are _Film History: An Introduction 

_(with Kristin Thompson, 2002), _Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and 

the Art of Entertainment _(2000), and _On the History of Film Style 

_(1997).





A film tells its story not only through dialogue and actors' 

performances but also through the director's control of movement and 

shot design. _Figures Traced in Light _is a detailed consideration of 

how cinematic staging carries the story, expresses emotion, and 

beguiles the audience through pictorial composition. Ranging over the 

entire history of cinema, David Bordwell focuses on four filmmakers' 

unique contributions to the technique. In-depth chapters examine 

Louis Feuillade, master of the 1910s serial; Kenji Mizoguchi, the 

great Japanese director who worked from the 1920s to the 1950s; Theo 

Angelopoulos, who began his career as a political modernist in the 

late 1960s; and Hou Hsiao-hsien, the Taiwanese filmmaker who in the 

1980s became the preeminent Asian director. For comparison, Bordwell 

draws on films by Howard Hawks, Michelangelo Antonioni, Yasujiro Ozu, 

Takeshi Kitano, and many other directors. Superbly illustrated with 

more than 500 frame enlargements and 16 color illustrations, _Figures 

Traced in Light _situates its close analysis of model sequences in 

the context of the technological, industrial, and cultural trends 

that shaped the directors' approaches to staging.



Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is 

available online: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9505.html



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