In this thoughtful and detailed work, Paisley Livingston takes a cautious approach to what can be, for the trained philosopher, a profoundly troubling area of scholarship. Much has been written on the contributions that film can make to philosophical thought. This is not troubling in itself – a film might be broadly ‘philosophical’, some viewers might find intellectual stimulation in the film they are watching – but a growing number of thinkers suggest that film can ‘do’ philosophy, that the medium itself can do philosophical work. In his first chapter, Livingston examines what he calls the ‘bold thesis’ (4), summarized as follows: ‘a conjunction of strong claims with regard to the means and results conditions-namely, the idea that some films can make historically innovative and independent contributions to philosophy by means exclusive to the cinematic medium or art form’ (20). Livingston cannot accept this, for if the term ‘philosophy’ refers to ‘systematic investigative, expressive, and communicative activities, at a high level of generality and abstraction…’ and if philosophers ‘investigate, discuss, and pronounce upon a range of significant, general topics…’ (12), then how can film do philosophy, as it is practised in university, ‘by means exclusive to the cinematic medium or art form’ (20)? One problem connected to this that the author highlights is that of paraphrasing. ‘If it is contended that the exclusively cinematic, innovative insight cannot be paraphrased, reasonable doubt arises with regard to its very existence.’ But if we accept that it can be paraphrased this is ‘incompatible with arguments for a significantly independent, innovative, and purely ‘filmic’ philosophical achievement…’ (21). He goes on to say that where the bold thesis is concerned, ‘what must be found is a case where a film-maker uses cinematic devices alone successfully to formulate and express an innovative and sophisticated philosophical line of thought or argument’ (34). Livingston does not oppose viewing cinema as helpful or as offering something to philosophy: ‘There is no good reason to spurn or belittle the pedagogical functions to which films can be put in the philosophical curriculum’ (35). He acknowledges that films are appealing, and that they can have a force that might help make them ‘an effective complement to a philosophical pensum or required reading list comprised of difficult writings by philosophers’ (35). So, he thinks that a ‘moderate’ position can be defended here, film might ‘usefully express or illustrate philosophical ideas and arguments…’ And, importantly, ‘It can do so by means of verbal or other devices that the cinema shares with other media and art forms’ (38).

In Chapter 2 Livingston introduces the notion, propounded by Hegel, ‘that it is a mistake to make an art form serve external ends…’ (39). For Hegel, art should not be instrumental and serve moral or political causes, for example. Now, Livingston thinks that this might have implications even for the moderate position outlined above. According to Livingston, Hegel considers art's ‘proper’ value to be ‘intrinsic and not a matter of art's advancement of non-artistic goals.’ Livingston calls this the ‘propriety objection’ (40). He accepts that while it might be the case that ‘some artistic value is intrinsic in some sense’ it is surely the case ‘that at least some artistic value is instrumental’ (41). He thinks that the propriety objection is not a good one, as ‘it has not been shown that someone who makes use of art films in an attempt to advance philosophical or other knowledge must make the mistake of turning his or her back on the films’ artistic value’ (42). The other objection from Hegel that concerns him, what he calls the ‘rationality objection’, is that ‘it is a mistake to use art to try to serve non-artistic ends because they are better served by other means’ (43). Can film, then, have an important philosophical role to play, when there are better ways of doing philosophy? Livingston contends ‘that cinema can contribute to philosophical enquiry in part because some film-makers employ the cinematic medium, along with other means, to express philosophical ideas. A film-maker's vivid and stirring evocation of philosophical questions and positions can motivate and guide philosophical reflection’ (63). These might appear to be rather modest and uncontroversial claims. In fact such claims concerning the film-maker aren't uncontroversial, and, in the third chapter, Livingston wisely discusses difficulties that surround the notion of the film-maker as ‘author’. Can films, for example, be seen as the expression of an individual's philosophical thoughts? Of course, we might watch films as though they are an expression of thought, but whose expression? Livingston suggests that it is ‘important to recognize cases of individual authorship as well as joint or collective authorship’ (64). This seems to be a sensible stance to take. But if something ‘is to be a work at all (as opposed, for example, to a part of a work, an unfinished fragment, or something else entirely), it must have ‘unity’ in the sense of having been individuated or marked off as a whole’ (66). And for Livingston, the unity of a work needs people or a person to come to a decision as to what is to be included. His view is that not all films are the creation of one mind, but that ‘authorship, be it successful or unsuccessful given one's artistic values, requires sufficient control over the production of a work presented as the artist's (or artists’) own’ (70). But ‘sufficient control’ does not make one an author of a work of art. Livingston talks here of the ‘goal’ of expression, that is ‘intentionally making an utterance or work that provides some indication that some psychological state or attitude, broadly defined, obtains in the author’ (70). For Livingston then, authorship is most appropriately used to ‘classify accomplishments that we evaluate as instances of expressive or artistic behaviour in various media, where authorship also involves exercising sufficient control over the making of the work as a whole’ (71). Livingston covers many objections here, and is consistently modest in his claims for the author: ‘I do not think anyone owns the word ‘author’ or that there is a single, correct concept of authorship codified by ordinary usage’ (82).

At the beginning of Chapter 5 he briefly discusses attempts by philosophers to associate Bergman with philosophical work of the past. It is unlikely that Bergman was even interested in many of those philosophers whose work is claimed to have influenced him. According to Birgitta Steen, ‘More perhaps than any other film maker Bergman has suffered from non-cinema-orientated critics who approach his films as though they were Kierkegaardian comments on the human condition’ (Birgitta Steene, ‘About Bergman: Some Critical Responses to His Films’, Cinema Journal 13 (1974), 3). It is often problematic to associate film-makers with philosophers, but it is all too easy to do so, and the invocation of philosophers in discussion of film can become a tiresome example of lazy thinking. But Livingston goes on to suggest that the Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila might have had a ‘real influence’ (135) on Bergman's work. Such an influence appears to be almost unknown among scholars. The author does not want to claim that Bergman's films illustrate Kaila's work but thinks one should ‘recognize the extent to which the characterizations and rhetorical design of Bergman's cinematic works mesh powerfully with some of Kaila's central psychological premises’ (127). A book by Kaila, Persoonallisus, appears to have had a profound effect on the young Bergman who, according to Livingston, found it ‘shattering yet terribly true’ (129). Livingston might be on to something here. Certain areas of life that Kaila discusses ‘correspond quite well to important aspects of Bergman's own experience, such as childhood humiliations and ritualized punishments, as well as his own powerful ambitions, sexual desires and notorious outbursts of anger’ (134). He suggests that descriptions of schizophrenic experience might have provided Bergman with inspiration for his Through a Glass Darkly, in which we see the declining stability of a young, schizophrenic woman who is tormented by hallucinations. Kaila describes how ‘the psychotic subject experiences a world full of secrets, a world on the verge of collapse’ (136). Livingston goes on to give examples of a number of Bergman films that appear to have connections to Kaila's thinking. Some critics might be sceptical here, but the author concedes that ‘any one of these (and many other) apparent correlations between motifs and ideas in Kaila's book and Bergman's scripts and films could be entirely coincidental…’ (140). He insists, however, that ‘when taken together they lend strong support to the hypothesis that the experience of reading Kaila was indeed a ground upon which the inquisitive and ambitious Bergman built…’ (140). In the pages that follow he gives examples of scenes within Bergman's films to show how his work relates to, or engages with, Kaila.

What is striking about this book is Livingston's rigorous approach, and the reader will undoubtedly be stimulated by the detail he provides. It is a fair, good-natured and generous work, with the author concluding that ‘most, if not all, films, including the most inept and reprehensible ones, have some kind of philosophical value…’ (200). Some films, however, can be seen as being philosophically constructive in that they ‘present characterizations and events designed to evoke subtle problems and ways of responding to them. And a few film-makers should be credited for making works of fiction that are informed by and express sophisticated thinking’ (200). I consider this to be an important work in the field of philosophy and film, but I do have reservations concerning the connection between film and philosophy. Bergman, for example, is a highly skilled, thoughtful film-maker, but I worry about the kind of thinking to be found in some of his films. Such concerns are absent from much work in the philosophy of film. George Lauder, for example, suggests that the ‘questions that Bergman asks are philosophical questions and so his films are a marriage of movies and metaphysics’ (Robert E. Lauder, God, Death, Love and Art (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1989), 33). Do those films of his that are concerned with ‘philosophical questions’, express ‘sophisticated thinking’ (200)? Birgitta Steene suggests that if Bergman is ‘a philosopher in the cinema, he is a philosopher with plagiarized views, personally important but culturally derivative’ (Cinema Journal, 3). I must confess that I am not convinced by some of the claims made by thinkers about the intellectual content of Bergman's films, and I have grave doubts about the philosophical importance of his work. I do not agree with Livingston's conclusions concerning the possible contributions of film to philosophical work, but I do think that this is an exceptional book, which should be useful to those struggling with the fundamental problems associated with philosophical approaches to film.