Raymond Bellour, while one of the most influential early theorists of cinema and the moving image, remains less well known among contemporary film scholars than he should be, even though he has exerted a formative influence on the field at large. One reason for this neglect is that his work is scattered across a myriad of essays published in French, the majority of which have not been translated into English. Bellour has also shown himself to be an exceptionally subtle and complex thinker, which makes it doubly difficult to gain an overall impression of the coherency of his thought. A characteristic of his approach that is often baffling to readers trained in Anglo-American traditions is an awareness of the complexities inherent in any proposition, acknowledgement of which undermines the possibility of reaching a definitive conclusion based on simple generalizations. He also displays a propensity for metaphoric and other figurative forms of expression that can render his propositions elusive. In consequence, he often appears to contradict himself over time. Notwithstanding the fact that his way of thinking lies outside the mainstream of twentieth and twenty-first century film and media theory, the trajectory of his thought and his careful recording of his intellectual responses to developments in film as a medium, a technology, and an art provide a kind of signage that marks out the significant debates in research on the moving image over a period of more than fifty years. The purpose of this book, then, is to provide a pathway through his works that should lead the Anglo-American reader to a better appreciation and understanding of Bellour's theories and perspectives on a range of important topics that are currently topics of renewed interest and debate within film and media scholarship. It will do so by focusing on what may be regarded as a nexus of issues that form the core of his practice.

The coherency inherent in this large body of writing derives, at least in part, from the way that it represents a practice of analysis that developed and evolved with the emergence of cinema studies as a field of scholarly research. Through this practice, Bellour initiated and developed modes of analysis and perspectives that, while extremely influential, were soon incorporated as givens into scholarly research on film.