Itineraries of walking and footwear on film [Review of: T.D. Tucker (2020) The Peripatetic Frame: Images of Walking in Film; E. Ezra, C. Wheatley (2020) Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film]

Over the past two decades, there has been growing scholarly interest in walking, as evidenced by an increasing number of publications, workshops (or sometimes ‘walkshops’), and other events dedicated to the topic. In this review, I focus on two recent volumes that can be positioned within this growing interest, but particularly contributing to the field of film studies. The Peripatetic Frame: Images of Walking in Film by Thomas Deane Tucker (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020) searches for a film-philosophy of walking on the screen. Though not strictly on walking, the edited volume Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film, edited by Elizabeth Ezra and Catherine Wheatley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), probes into the multifaceted histories and philosophies of footwear in cinema. Across twenty chapters, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature through an in-depth exploration of shoes as signifiers of labour, social class, sexuality, displacement, and fantasy among others. While The Peripatetic Frame focuses on the cinematic images of walking (as an act) to explore the ways in which they fulfil a cinematic function in the depiction of mental, psychological, and physical spaces; Shoe Reels zooms in on footwear (as an object) and their multifold functions on screen narratives as symbols, indexes, and metaphors. Both volumes provide surprising and enriching insights into the study of walking in cinema.