Cinematic Ethics Exploring Ethical Experience through Film

How do movies evoke and express ethical ideas? What role does our emotional involvement play in this process? What makes the aesthetic power of cinema ethically significant?

Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film addresses these questions by examining the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience with the power to provoke emotional understanding and philosophical thinking.

In a clear and engaging style, Robert Sinnerbrink examines the key philosophical approaches to ethics in contemporary film theory and philosophy using detailed case studies of cinematic ethics across different genres, styles, and filmic traditions.

Written in a lucid and lively style that will engage both specialist and non-specialist readers, this book is ideal for use in the academic study of philosophy and film. Key features include annotated suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter and a filmography of movies useful for teaching and researching cinematic ethics.

Preface I Cinema and/as Ethics 1. Cinematic Ethics: Film as a Medium of Ethical Experience II Philosophical Approaches to Cinematic Ethics 2. From Scepticism to Moral Perfectionism (Cavell) 3. From Cinematic Belief to Ethics and Politics (Deleuze) 4. Cinempathy: Phenomenology, Cognitivism, and Moving Images III Performing Cinematic Ethics 5. The Moral Melodrama (Stella Dallas, Talk to Her) 6. Melodrama, Realism, and Ethical Experience (Biutiful, The Promise) 7. Gangster Film: Cinematic Ethics in The Act of Killing Conclusion Appendix 1. Annotated Bibliography Appendix 2. Filmography Index

Robert Sinnerbrink is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Australia.