Review of Martin Flanagan, Bakhtin and the Movies

Abstract

A well-needed installment in the sparse critical work on Bakhtin and cinema, Martin Flanagan's Bakhtin and the Movies: New Ways of Understanding Hollywood Film (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) uses the Russian theorist in order to provide diverse readings of Hollywood cinema. Flanagan introduces Bakhtin's work in a coherent manner and uses his concepts of dialogism and the chronotope in order to address questions of genre, dialogue and new technologies. Moreover, Flanagan's work helps to further the current movement applying methodologies of critical theory and film philosophy to a revived scholarly interest in mainstream cinema.