Seven - Paperback

by Richard Dyer (Author)

David Fincher's Seven (1995) follows two detectives, David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), as they investigate a series of gruesome murders. One of the most acclaimed films of the 1990s, it explores themes of moral decay, human darkness, and the blurred lines between good and evil.

Richard Dyer's study of the film, unpacks how its cinematography, sound, and plot combine to create a harrowing account of a world beset by an all-encompassing, irremediable wickedness. He explores the film in terms of sin, story, structure, seriality, sound, sight and salvation, analyzing how Seven both epitomizes and modifies the serial killer genre, which is such a feature of recent cinema.

This new edition includes a new afterword by the author, re-assessing the film's lasting impact and influence over contemporary filmmaking aesthetics.

Author Biography

Richard Dyer is Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at King's College, London, and Professorial Fellow in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK. He has been honoured by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, and Turku and Yale Universities, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of BFI Film Classics on Brief Encounter (2002, 2015) and La dolce vita (2017, 2020). His many other books include Stars (1979), White (1997), The Culture of Queers (2002), Nino Rota (BFI, 2010) and In the Space of a Song (2012)