An account of film theory aimed at teh cinemagoer and the student. It ranges from the late 1960s to the present, a period in which a number of conceptual strands were woven together. The authors chart the construction of this synthesis and its subsequent fragmentation, and elucidate the various intellectual currents contributing to it. The authors trace the shift from Althusserian Marxism to Lacanian psychoanalysis as the dominant paradigms for discussing aesthetic questions.--From book jacket.