Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part One: What Is the Modern? -- 1 THEORIZING MODERNISM -- Modern -- Modernism -- Avant-Garde -- Cinema and Modernism: The First Encounter -- The Institution of the Art Film -- Modernist Art Cinema and the Avant-Garde -- 2 THEORIES OF THE CLASSICAL/MODERN DISTINCTION IN THE CINEMA -- Style Analysts -- Evolutionists -- Modern Cinema and Deleuze -- Modernism as an Unfinished Project -- Part Two: The Forms of Modernism -- 3 MODERN ART CINEMA: STYLE OF MOVEMENT? -- 4 NARRATION IN MODERN CINEMA -- Classical versus Modernist Art Films -- The Alienation of the Abstract Individual -- Who Is "the Individual" in Modern Cinema? -- The Role of Chance -- Open-Ended Narrative -- Narrative Trajectory Patterns: Linear, Circular, Spiral -- 5 GENRE IN MODERN CINEMA -- Melodrama and Modernism -- Excursus: Sartre and the Philosophy of Nothingness -- A Modern Melodrama: Antonioni's Eclipse (1962) -- Other Genres and Recurrent Plot Elements -- Investigation -- Wandering/Travel -- The Mental Journey -- Closed-Situation Drama -- Satire/Genre Parody -- The Film Essay -- 6 PATTERNS OF MODERN FORMS -- Primary Formation: Continuity and Discontinuity -- Radical Continuity -- Imaginary Time in Last Year at Marienbad -- Radical Discontinuity -- The Fragmented Form according to Godard -- Serial Form -- 7 STYLES MODERNISM -- Minimalist Styles -- The Bresson Style -- Abstract Subjectivity and the "Model" -- Bresson and His Followers -- Analytical Minimalism: The Antonioni Style -- Psychic Landscape? -- Continuity -- Antonioni and His Followers -- Expressive Minimalism -- 8 NATURALIST STYLES -- Post-neorealism -- Cinéma Vérité -- The "New Wave" Style -- 9 ORNAMENTAL STYLES -- 10 THEATRICAL STYLES -- 11 MODERN CINEMA TRENDS -- The Family Tree of Modern Cinema -- Part Three: Appearance and Propagationof Modernism (1949-1958).

12 CRITICAL REFLEXIVITY OR THE BIRTH OF THE AUTEUR -- The Birth of the Auteur -- Historical Forms of Reflexivity -- The Emergence of Critical Reflexivity: Bergman's Prison -- Reflexivity and Abstraction: Modern Cinemaand the Nouveau Roman -- 13 THE RETURN OF THE THEATRICAL -- Abstract Drama -- 14 THE DESTABILIZATION OF THE FABULA -- Voice-Over Narration -- The Dissolution of Classical Narrative: Film Noirand Modernism -- Fabula Alternatives: Hitchcock -- Alternative Subjective Narration: Rashomon -- 15 AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CLASSICAL FORM: NEOREALISM AND MODERNISM -- The End of Neorealism -- Modernism in Story of a Love Affair: NeorealismMeets Film Noir -- Rossellini: The "Neorealist Miracle" -- Part Four: The Short Story of Modern Cinema (1959-1975) -- 16 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1959-1961 -- Neorealism: The Reference -- Eastern Europe: From Socialist Realism toward Neorealism -- Heroism versus Modernism -- Jerzy Kawalerowicz: The First Modern Polish Auteur -- The Year 1959 -- Forms of Romantic Modernism -- Genre and Narration in the Early Years -- Sound and Image -- Background and Foreground -- From Hiroshima to Marienbad: Modernism andthe Cinema of the Elite -- The Production System of the "New Cinema" -- 17 ESTABLISHED MODERNISM, 1962-1966 -- Western Europe around 1962 -- The Key Film of 1962: Fellini's 8 1/2 -- Central Europe -- Czechoslovak Grotesque Realism -- The "Central European Experience" -- Jancsó and the Ornamental Style -- Summary -- 18 THE YEAR 1966 -- The Loneliness of the Auteur -- 19 POLITICAL MODERNISM, 1967-1975 -- The Year 1968 -- Conceptual Modernism: The Auteur's New World -- Reconstructing Reality -- Counter-Cinema: Narration as a Direct Auteurial Discourse -- The Film as a Means of Direct Political Action -- Parabolic Discourse -- Teorema -- The Auteur's Private Mythology -- The Self-Critique of Political Modernism: Sweet Movie.

Summary -- 20 "The Death of the Auteur" -- The Last of Modernism: Mirror -- Mirror and Serial Structure -- The Disappearance of Nothingness -- Appendix: A Chronology of Modern Cinema -- Selected Bibliography -- Index of Names and Movie Titles.