It is a truism that the number of hands on the cinematic screen is approximately twice the number of characters represented in films. This vast quantity of limbs became a challenge early in the present project despite help by friends, colleagues, and students who offered lists of important examples that ultimately became an aggregate filmography of several hundred cases. Having been initially overwhelmed by this unwieldy collection, I eventually found some assurance that the research task might not be so daunting. I began to discern categorical variations on the role played by hands in the cinematic art. Hands were abundantly available for scrutiny, but the list became more manageable by concentrating on appearances that were disposed to analytical attention because of their meaningful value. As the methodology shifted from enumeration to categorisation it invited a two-sided process: by considering what cinema had to say about human hands, it was necessary to reflect upon what that limb could reveal about the art form itself.

The book in front of you uses a familiar modus operandi; one in which film is considered in relation to another concept – literature, philosophy, adaptation, history – or objects – cars, guns, costumes, architecture – used to chart the historical and aesthetic development of both medium and mediated. If I have achieved my objective even partially, the proposal that the hand has something of indispensable importance to add to these studies should become explicit. To offer a visual analogy: this book might be conceived as an hourglass. In the top bulb, theoretical ruminations on the cinema lie in layers with wider philosophical questions – ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic – stratified as theses and antitheses. These levels blend as they percolate through the narrow neck of the sandglass, which represents the catalyst of this study: hands. Following that theoretical amalgamation, new ideas and conceptualisations emerge synthetically to shed light on how humankind has used the cinema as a mode of artistic expression to explore what it means to be a sentient, socially participating, and creative individual. Fundamentally this study comprises a series of attempts at justifying why the hand has such a crucial role to play in this process of revelation.