Hands on Film is a comprehensive study of the representations and on-screen uses of the human limb, spanning the history of the cinema from its birth to contemporary times. It examines how filmmakers have framed the hand for a variety of effects, from stylistic to thematic, and for the development of characterisation and narrative. The book offers insights into how films have created meaning by focusing on that part of the anatomy and, in turn, proposes a variety of ways in which its on-screen appearances might shed light on what it means to be sentient, cultured, and creative beings in the world.

Barry Monahan lectures in the Department of Film & Screen Media at University College Cork. He researches and has published in Irish and other national cinemas from historical, theoretical, and aesthetic perspectives. His monographs include Ireland’s Theatre on Film: Style, Stories and the National Stage on Screen (Irish Academic Press, 2009), and The Films of Lenny Abrahamson: a filmmaking of philosophy, published by Bloomsbury in 2018.

List of Images
Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. Themes – The Framed Hand and Being
Natural and Supernatural Phenomena: Matter Becoming Consciousness
The Nature and Origin of Creativity
Determinism and Free Will: Possession, Self-possession, Dispossession
Modernism: Industrialisation and Technology
Gendered Hands

2. Symbolism – The Semiotic Hand
The Meaningful Hand and Metonymy
The Manual as Metaphorical
Between Metaphor and Metonym: The Hand and Memory

3. Aesthetics – The Stylised Hand: Beauty, Ugliness, Genre
Behind the Scenes: Unseen Creative Hands
The Stylised Hand on Screen
The Camp Hand and the Hand in Camp
The Haptic Experience: Screened Sensations

4. Narration – Hands Doing and Being
Hands as Narrative Actants
Slow Hands and Slow Cinema
Acting Hands and Set Pieces

5. Characterisation – Hands and Identity
Cultural Contexts for Creative and Destructive Personalities
The Psychopathic Hand
Vocational Hands
Characters and Labour
Manual Details: Emotions and Eccentricities
Concealing and Revealing Characters
Concluding Case Study – Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)

Filmography
Index