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The Rebirth of Suspense
Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema
by Rick Warner
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Book Presentation:
Typically, films are suspenseful when they keep us on the edge of our seats, when glimpses of a turning doorknob, a ticking clock, or a looming silhouette quicken our pulses. Exemplified by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterworks and the countless thrillers they influenced, such films captivate viewers with propulsive plots that spur emotional investment in the fates of protagonists. Suspense might therefore seem to be a curious concept to associate with art films featuring muted characters, serene landscapes, and unrushed rhythms, in which plot is secondary to mood and tone.
This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called “slow cinema.” Rick Warner shows how slowness builds suspense through atmospheric immersion, narrative sparseness, and the withholding of information, causing viewers to oscillate among boredom, curiosity, and dread. He focuses on works in which suspense arises where the boundaries between art cinema and popular genres—such as horror, thriller, science fiction, and gothic melodrama—become indefinite, including Chantal Akerman’s La captive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Warner investigates the pivotal role of sound in generating suspense and traces how the experience of suspense has changed in the era of digital streaming. The Rebirth of Suspense develops a fresh theory, history, typology, and analysis of suspense that casts new light on the workings of films across global cinema.
About the Author:
Rick Warner is associate professor and director of film studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks (2018).
Press Reviews:
The Rebirth of Suspense offers a lucid and original contribution to the study of both suspense in general and how it operates in varieties of slow cinema. Rick Warner adds significantly to our understanding of different dimensions of suspense and hybrid effects in cinema that complicate oppositions between mainstream and arthouse approaches. Geoff King, author of Arthouse Crime Scenes: Art Film, Genre and Crime in Contemporary World Cinema
Rick Warner offers a provocative rethinking of suspense that gives us a new way of seeing works of slow cinema—and the aesthetic of slowness more generally. His juxtaposition of suspense and slow cinema is both counterintuitive and elegant, opening a productive avenue of aesthetic exploration with originality and insight. Sophisticated but accessible, this is an exciting work of film scholarship. Jordan Schonig, author of The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement
This beautifully written, richly nuanced book invites us to slow down: to feel the orchestration of suspense in its many forms. Through careful analyses of global art filmmakers (Chantal Akerman, David Lynch, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Kelly Reichardt, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, to name a few), Warner makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary film theory and burgeoning studies of atmosphere and environment. Saige Walton, author of Cinema's Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement
In clear, eminently readable prose, Warner challenges the well-worn Hitchcockian model of suspense. His meticulous readings break down divisions between art-house and genre film, expanding our understanding of not only suspense and its affects but also the film medium itself. This book is a vital and long-overdue contribution to film theory. Catherine Wheatley, author of Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema
Drawing in imaginative fashion on contemporary affective, phenomenological, and eco-theoretical concepts, Warner’s strikingly original study is a master class in applied theory. Grounded in exceptionally perceptive and compelling analyses of a wide variety of films and genres, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the operations of suspense (and much else besides) in cinema and beyond. Daniel Yacavone, coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Moving Image Atmospheres and Felt Environments
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
> From the same author:
True to the Spirit (2011)
Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity
Dir. Colin MacCabe, Kathleen Murray and Rick Warner
Subject: Technique > Adaptation
> On a related topic:
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