Murray Smith is Professor of Philosophy, Art, and Film at the University of Kent, co-director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at Kent, and Past President of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. He has published widely on film, art and aesthetics. In addition to Engaging Characters, his publications include Film, Art, and the Third Culture (OUP); Trainspotting (BFI); Film Theory and Philosophy (co-edited with Richard Allen) (OUP); Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (co-edited with Steve Neale) (Routledge); and Thinking through Cinema (co-edited with Tom Wartenberg) (Blackwell).

• Acknowledgements


• List of figures and frame enlargements


• Preface


• Introduction


• Part I


• 1. The Saliency of Character


• 2. The imaginative Spectator


• Part II


• 3. Engaging Characters


• 4. The Threshold of Legibility; Recognition


• 5. Screens and Filters: Alignment


• 6. Soot and Whitewash: Allegiance


• Conclusion


• Appendix: segmentations


• Bibliography


• Index

In Engaging Characters, Smith sets out a comprehensive analysis of character, exploring the role of characters in our experience of film and media. This revised, 25th anniversary edition refines and extends the arguments of the first edition, reappraising the debates on emotion, empathy, and film spectatorship that the book has inspired.