This collection of essays demonstrates the usefulness of looking at cinema with the analytical methods provided by art theory. The Visual Turn is a dialogue between art historians and film theorists from the silent period to the aftermath of World War II. Its aim is to broaden the horizons of film studies, while making students of art history more comfortable when they approach the key texts of classical film theory. Through pairings of articles, the book demonstrates that an implicit dialogue between art historians and film specialists has enriched both fields for decades. By combining original essays, reprints, and translations from French and Italian, the two disciplines speak about rich issues such as: iconophobia, iconophilia and iconoclasm; haptic and optical images; cognitivism and aesthetics; visual form, history and technology.