Daniel Yacavone, Film Worlds: A Philosophical Aesthetics of Cinema

Daniel Yacavone maintains that none of the existent approaches to cinema – theoretical, analytic, or phenomenological – succeed in grasping the uniqueness of the art form. He sets out to address this deficiency in Film Worlds, advancing a tripartite model of cinematic aesthetics that draws on paradigms established by Nelson Goodman, Mikel Dufrenne, and Martin Heidegger respectively. The monograph consists of an introduction followed by eight chapters divided into four parts, one each on: film worlds, cinematic representation (Goodman), cinematic expression (Dufrenne), and cinematic truth (Heidegger). Part II, comprising an extended analysis of Goodman’s Languages of Art and Ways of Worldmaking as applied to cinema, is the most substantial and satisfying, offering a theory of cinematic representation which is grounded in Goodman’s aesthetics and likely to appeal to philosophers working in both the analytic and what I shall for the sake of brevity call “continental” traditions. In consequence, Yacavone’s stated aim of replacing existing philosophical and theoretical approaches to narrative film is to at least some extent achieved.