Religion in Film

This collection offers many fascinating, clear, and well-written essays on themes and images of religion in film. The book is organized in three parts, beginning with approaches to religious interpretations of film, moving to genres and cultural trends, and finishing with individual treatment of over a dozen directors, including Chaplin, Hitchcock, Bergman, Truffaut, Coppola. Although the essays on the directors are a bit too terse, each introduces insights that are fertile ground for further speculation. Taken as a whole, the book provides a primer for exploring the relationship between religion and film and will be engaging to film scholars in general and to readers interested in religious interpretations in particular. And though aimed at an academic audience, the writing is neither so dull nor obscure as to dissuade the casual reader.