Introduction

Abstract

The introduction theorizes a new term, “film quotation” for the medium-specific re-framing, and re-viewing of preexisting films within subsequent films. This chapter theorizes film quotation as a visual corollary to literary quotation, drawing on the way humanities make meaning; the pull-quote, epigraph, and quotation remain the standard for citing evidence, invoking authority, or interrogating both literary and scholarly writing. This chapter theorizes film quotation as a specific manifestation within film intertextuality, in a specific historical frame. By focusing on film quotations of classical Hollywood film--mainstream American studio production, 1915-1950--as quoted in post-classical Hollywood, roughly 1960 to present, accesses a key turn in Hollywood and American cultural history, allowing post-classical cinema to visualize its own “belatedness,” its awareness of coming after a “classical” period. As a constitutive element of post-classical authorship, film quotations amass and manufacture “classical” Hollywood in retrospective, simultaneously creative and critical ways