This is our backup site. Click here to visit our main site at MellenPress.com
Subject Area: Film & Cinema Studies
Danelski, Christine M.2016 1-4955-0493-X 360 pages
This study compares The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper with five of its filmed versions. These comparisons demonstrate and comment upon how American ideas about race and gender have been constructed and reconstructed since the nineteenth century. This historical and cultural analysis tracks the colonial and national treatment of Native Americans, the development of the Hollywood studio feature and how colonialism, masculinity and race are depicted and re-enacted in these six texts.
Coyne, Patrick
2010 0-7734-3756-8 352 pages
This work is the first comprehensive, full-length work on Alice Duer Miller and her contributions to American letters and cultural history. This original research will be of practical use to researchers and scholars in the areas of American literature, American studies, film history, Broadway history, and gender studies.
Beguiristain, Mario
2007 0-7734-5703-8 432 pages
Theatrical Realism is an American film movement of the 1950s noted for its high aspirations – to create a significant ‘art’ cinema. Ironically, the films that comprise this movement are virtually forgotten today. Theatrical Realism is Hollywood’s continuation of the Italian Neo-Realist movement. It was a direct result of the confluence of “Method Acting” as taught by Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, the screen adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and William Inge, and the Golden Age of Television.
Quinn, Maureen
2007 0-7734-5310-5 180 pages
This study introduces basic concepts of the emerging discipline of literary-film adaptation criticism specifically geared toward literary disciplines. The text describes the evolution of adaptation criticism from Virginia Woolfe's somewhat derisive comments about film adaptation to modern scholarly approaches. The work builds on and adapts elements of literary criticism for adaptation study observing how basic elements of film criticism can be adapted for literary adaptation study. Case studies are included to demonstrate a method of discussing each form through its own methods. Despite the disparate qualities of the two media literary adaptation criticism offers a perspective in which literature and film can be discussed as partners that modify one another.
Andrews, David
1999 0-7734-7960-0 172 pages
This study has three revisionary goals. The first is to offer a major revaluation of aestheticism as a literary and historical idea, demonstrating that it is not limited to ‘art for art's sake'. Second, it reexamines Nabokov in the light of his aestheticism, reconciling two major trends in Nabokovian criticism by showing that Nabokov is at once an aesthete and a humanist. Third, it offers a revisionary reading of Lolita, focusing on aestheticism. In addition, it provides a groundbreaking essay that compares three adaptations of Lolita: Nabokov's screenplay, Stanley Kubrick's film, and Adrian Lyne's recent film.
Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation
Connon, Daisy2009 0-7734-4919-1 296 pages
This work specifically addresses the productive quality of states of dislocation in Francophone literature, cinema and visual culture. It is the first volume to substantially study dislocation within the French and Francophone cultures.
Davidson, Phebe
2001 0-7734-7342-4 156 pages
Six wide-ranging essays which track the evolving representation and understanding of stories and themes, an exercise in seeing where a particular idea, image, or sequence of events will lead. For example, Chapter One traces the evolution of the black/white masculine friendship pair from James Fenimore Cooper through Die Hard to The Green Mile. Chapter four discusses Thelma and Louise and Leaving Normal as complementary cultural texts which serve to extend gender definitions found in earlier American literature and which continue actively to engage men and women in American culture today. “There’s nothing ordinary about Davidson’s always interesting insights throughout these six essays. . . . An engrossing, original look at film, energetic and lively. As a cultural observer, Davidson is sensitive and conscientious, and she reveals the American myths that both imprison and liberate.” – Book Reader
Gonthier Jr., David
2006 0-7734-5833-6 236 pages
This book studies a number of well-known prison films from an analytical and historical perspective. Throughout the years, prison movies have appeared to be neglected within the canon of genres like westerns, screwball comedies, horror films and the like; they have been recognized merely an adjunct subgenre to the more prominent genres like gangster films. The prison movie is indeed its own separate genre, and the book proves this by utilizing existing genre criticism, especially from leading scholars like Thomas Schatz. Although there have been a number of cross-genre films (Blade Runner is a fusion of science fiction, film noir, and action/adventure; Star Wars is a science fiction western action film, etc.), the prison movie is perhaps the only pure-bred genre that yields so many other genres within its original framework: gangster prison films (The Big House), film noir prison films (Brute Force), western prison films (There Was a Crooked Man), sports prison films (The Longest Yard), science fiction prison films (Escape from New York), the POW film (Stalag 17), even musicals (Chicago). In addition to surveying the genre from 1930-2000, the book deconstructs twelve films in great detail through full annotated summaries based on the codes and conventions of the proposed genre – films like Stalag 17, Cool Hand Luke, Midnight Express, Escape from Alcatraz, and The Shawshank Redemption are among the films considered.
Hollenbeck, Josette
2004 0-7734-6489-1 216 pages
This is a critical study of Francophone cultures as they can be detected from selected films, including ‘Daens’ (Belgium), ‘The Boat is Full’ (Switzerland), ‘Finzan’ (Mali); ‘Zan Boko’ (Burkina Faso), ‘Vagabond’ and/or ‘Life is a Long Quiet River’ (France) and others. Each chapter presents a list of idiomatic expressions (when appropriate), a critical study of the culture (traditional and contemporary), and a stylistic analysis of the script. It also stresses what is authentic and what is fiction.
Hortiguera, Hugo
2007 0-7734-5348-2 248 pages
This groundbreaking collection of essays examines Argentine cultural production during the 1989-2001 period, which coincided with the implementation of neoliberalism under President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) and his successor, Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001), thereby providing an overview of the way Argentine writers, filmmakers, musicians and media reacted to this centrality of the market forces. This collection will be of interest to scholars of Latin American Cultural Studies, Hispanic Studies, Film Studies as well as those of Comparative Literature.
Quinn, Paul
2009 0-7734-4788-1 276 pages
The first extensive study of the British B film in the post-war period. The B film was, in the 1950s and 1960s, part of the staple fare of a cinema-going public although, even in their heyday, these films were undervalued even by the people who made them. Once the ‘full supporting programme’ disappeared from local cinema screens these films also apparently disappeared from the consciousness of all but a very few. This book contains ten black and white photographs.
Legg, Olga
2019 1-4955-0772-6 120 pages
Dr. Legg's book adopts a semiotic approach in order to understand culture and society as a theatrical category and the way it functions as a dialogic discourse in the film Le Bal, also known as "O'Baille", directed by Ettore Scola.
Dym, Jeffrey A.
2003 0-7734-6648-7 312 pages
This research fills an important lacuna in Japanese cultural history and film history. During the early decades of motion pictures, film exhibitors worldwide experimented with having entertainers sit next to the screen to provide commentary and dialogue. Though this never caught on in the West, in Japan, the narrators (benshi) became an integral part of motion picture history, creating the unique narrative art of setsumei. This work details the history of both benshi and setsumei, placing them within the cultural milieu of early 20th century Japan.
Mann, Dave
2009 0-7734-4763-6 328 pages
The first study to date devoted to the genesis of domestic TV/Film production, this project presents for the first time an industrial and cultural history of the transformation of the lower reaches of Britain’s film industry during the period 1946-1964.
Myers, James M.
1998 0-7734-8304-7 244 pages
This book examines the United States government’s efforts to use the motion picture industry to aid the war effort and maintain high public morale during the Second World War.
Hamilton, Mark A.
2006 0-7734-5774-7 372 pages
Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, identified four main myths: Comedy, Romance, Tragedy, and Irony/Satire. These were essentially genres, each of which move through six phases. Frye believed a critic could simply organize literature into these phases to show that literature formed ‘an ideal order.’ For each of these phases, Frye identified typical narrative structures and characteristics – primal myths in which humanity was and is consistently concerned. Comedy is the reconciliation of the protagonist with his community at the end, Romance is like a knight’s quest, Tragedy shows us a hero’s separation from his society, and Irony/Satire gives us the everyday difficulties and dissembling of life.
This book shows how Anatomy of Criticism could categorize not only written literature but also 20th- century film. The book matches Frye’s Irony/Satire mythos to Film Noir (fascination with everyday crime), and the Tragedy mythos to the War film (almost always tragic on some level). It equates the Romance mythos to the Western film genre (as Morris Bishop, the medieval historian has said, the western hero is very much the modern-day knight), and Comedy to the comedy genre.
Sorensen, Lars-Martin
2009 0-7734-4673-7 356 pages
Very few English-language books have focused exclusively upon the occupation period and its effects on cinema. This book investigates how Japanese fiction films produced during the American occupation 1945-1952 subverted occupation film censorship. It is based on extensive archival research and the primary focus is on the films of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.
Haney, William S. II
1999 0-7734-8047-1 196 pages
These essays discuss not only British literature but other literatures in English and texts in other media including film, and the changing face of not just one nation's cultural studies but cultural studies in a transnational environment. These essays epitomize a complex proliferation of approaches to the ever-changing domain of literary and cultural studies.
Membrez, Nancy J.
2007 0-7734-5428-4 488 pages
This book presents a comprehensive evaluation of Argentine screenwriter-director Eliseo Subiela’s life’s work in cinema. Representing a wide range of theoretical approaches, seventeen film scholars from various academic institutions in the United States, England, and Argentina address every one of his films, current to 2006. In addition to the critical studies of Subiela’s films, the book also includes: an autobiographical meditation by Subiela on his own life’s work; an interview with actor Hugo Soto (now deceased) who played Subiela’s most famous creation, Rantés (Man Facing Southeast, 1986); a lengthy conversation with the director himself; and a global look at the director’s life and ideas, which is followed by a list of his international film prizes. This book contains 51 black and white photographs.
Plantus-Runey, Doris
2007 0-7734-5608-2 296 pages
Ionel Teodoreanu published Lorelei in 1935 after having earned his place in Romanian literary history with his consummate trilogy, La Medeleni. His critics challenged the dense figurative style of Lorelei, and, as a result, Lorelei would not enjoy wide disseminations into other translations. This study of the translation and adaptation of Lorelei argues that the creative processes, both separately and collectively, earn value as primary and generative productions of literary and cinematic text.
Allert, Beate
2008 0-7734-5166-8 364 pages
This anthology of primarily doctoral student essays on European Film 1925-1965 demonstrates how analyzing film provides new insights into visual culture, world literature, and multiculturalism. The diversity of current theoretical debates in film, visual theory, and postmodernism is complemented by the work’s contributors’ varied backgrounds.
Haddu, Miriam
2007 0-7734-5433-0 284 pages
This study examines, contextualizes, and evaluates the significance of contemporary Mexican filmmaking, focusing on the so-called ‘cine nuevo’ of 1989-1999. Accordingly, the study is divided into three sections, representing the key generic discourses that frame the films’ narratives and underlying aims: The first analyzes contemporary Mexican cinema’s re-presentation of history on the cinematic screen; the second part of the book examines the rise in the number of women directors, comparing it with the previous lack of female participation within the filmmaking arena; the last section explores the re-location of cinematic geographies in contemporary cinema.
Shelton, Robert
2003 0-7734-6714-9 548 pages
This exhaustive two-volume work approaches the films as works of art with notations of prevailing critical response. Each major film coverage begins with a ‘data block’ giving dates, personnel, etc., so that the textual material can move directly to substantive aspects. Material is presented not only as a text resource of information, but a correlation of film with other media as a time frame from association that might suggest cross-influence. Comparisons of directors’ styles and films of a certain period or culture as well as cross-cultural examination round out the coverage of each area. These volumes can function as a text for an introductory and in-depth course in the Art Film. With illustrations from films.
Shelton, Robert
2003 0-7734-6712-2 392 pages
This exhaustive two-volume work approaches the films as works of art with notations of prevailing critical response. Each major film coverage begins with a ‘data block’ giving dates, personnel, etc., so that the textual material can move directly to substantive aspects. Material is presented not only as a text resource of information, but a correlation of film with other media as a time frame from association that might suggest cross-influence. Comparisons of directors’ styles and films of a certain period or culture as well as cross-cultural examination round out the coverage of each area. These volumes can function as a text for an introductory and in-depth course in the Art Film. With illustrations from films.
Turner, Barnard Edward
2005 0-7734-6219-8 284 pages
This study explores the abiding fascination and provocation of the American frontier West in the contemporary period, in contexts which both ground it historically and extrapolate from it, refracting it through contemporary film, literature, science fiction and the rhetoric of information technology. A historical, geopolitical specificity in granted by chapters on D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico, contemporary Montana literature, and two popular movies set there and in Oregon respectively. The American West is more generally considered strategically in its connections to Europe, as in Wim Wenders’s classic Paris, Texas, the Beach Boys’ work in the Netherlands and the consideration of the European vision of the internet as a new frontier. Comparable connections to East Asia are granted in a chapter on the presentation of Japan in seminal works by Richard Brautigan. Close textual analysis of abiding works is given, against a background of seminal, related critical works not only in historical and cultural studies, but also in film analysis and information technology. Such extrapolations in turn reflect on the self-conception of the region, and therefore yield a pertinent and timely contribution of that reassessment of the nation as it enters the new millennium.
Simcovitch, Maxim Todd
2018 1-4955-0666-5 204 pages
What has truly been needed, especially with today's cinematic revolution, nationally as well as internationally, is a specific handbook or guide-book that will assist the cinephile (artist or scholar) to obtain a more serious, intensive "handle" or grip on understanding the elements that comprise each and every film; to get a firm grasp on those intricate codes within a film that motivate viewers.
Development of the Tech-Noir Film: A Theory of the Development of Popular Genres in Fiction and Film
Auger, Emily E.2010 0-7734-3752-5 348 pages
This book examines Tech-Noir as a distinct literary and cinematic genre. It provides a comprehensive comparative historical analysis of the development of Tech-Noir in relation to other established genres and attempts to define the parameters of the definition of Tech-Noir.
Kooyman, Ben
2014 0-7734-0088-5 332 pages
Looks at the filmmaking environment and logically lays out his conclusions on how some of the most popular and culturally significant directors negotiate authorial identities within the global environment.
Price, Thomas F.
1992 0-7734-9897-4 364 pages
Introduces a new general theory of dramatic form, together with a detailed, practicable method for the analysis and critical understanding of plays and screenplays. The author proposes that any play or screenplay can ultimately be understood as conforming to one of just seven dynamic types, and that knowledge of the kinetic and modal signatures of these skeletal `plots' provides the key for decoding the metaphorical significance of a drama's action and imagery. Examples range from ancient Greek drama to modern opera libretti to contemporary film, and from acknowledged dramatic masterpieces to more popular works. Will help drama professionals and students better grasp a work's conception and intention, and help the non-professional audience better understand a play or movie.
Choi, Myung
2009 0-7734-3844-0 132 pages
This work examines the presence of the grotesque in fiction, plastic arts, and films, to interpret the postmodern artistic phenomenon. The Reader’s Response Theory is utilized in order to examine the relevance of the grotesque to one of the most important factors of postmodernism: the reader. The study analyzes the evolution of the grotesque and reveals different levels of grotesque imagery and its possible meanings in the works of three authors: Machado de Assis, Camilo José Cela, and Alejandra Pizarnik.
Almeida, Diane M.
2000 0-7734-7693-8 120 pages
Valle-Inclán’s esperpentos are a particularly Spanish style of black comedy. This work analyses Valle-Inclán’s works, defines precisely what the term esperpento means, and what technique Valle-Inclán used to achieve his aesthetic. These techniques are demonstrated by examples from the plays themselves. The second part examines the manner in which Valle-Inclán’s esperpento blends with Buñuel’s surrealistic films, particularly Un Chien andalou, L’age d’or and Tierra Sin Pan. This book serves as a study of Spanish literature and film at the beginning of the 20th century, and as a demonstration of the great and often unacknowledged debt that the cinema owes to the theatre.
Tucker, John
2012 0-7734-2595-0 480 pages
This collection of twelve articles and one interview probes the historical evolution and cultural diversity of cinema from the Nordic countries: Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The studies variously address cinematic schools and national traditions on one hand or individual films or filmmakers on the other. Cinematic modernism, censorship, and globalization are among the themes explored; the collection also addresses the aesthetic, moral, and social preoccupations of the great northern filmmakers from revered figures like Carl Th. Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman, to iconoclast contemporaries like Lars Von Trier, Roy Andersson and Aki Kaurismäki. The authors, all specialists in the field, include both emerging and established voices. Together their multiple perspectives provide a fresh and comprehensive consideration of an influential and admired cinematic tradition.
Pernot-Deschamps, Marguerite
2009 0-7734-4761-X 168 pages
This work examines Neil Jordan’s use of images taken from Irish history, Catholicism, the Irish land and the world of art and the senses, in his films and, heretofore unexamined novels.
Davidson, Phebe
1997 0-7734-8612-7 192 pages
This collection of essays explores the ways in which film and fiction share narrative and thematic material while serving as cultural texts. The collection is intended to reflect a broad spectrum of critical positions. Works include Last Exit to Brooklyn, Angel Heart, Frankenstein, Wise Blood, Rambling Rose, Smooth Talk, Trifles, The Glass Key, Catch 22, Forrest Gump, Silence of the Lambs, The Glass Key, Miller's Crossing. Topics include the social construction of character, underlying messages, the evolution of work from novel to film, ethics, women's studies.
Taub, Michael
2005 0-7734-6121-3 140 pages
This collection of essays focuses on films dealing with important issues in the Jewish world. Films selected are only those who make a significant contribution to our understanding of a particular theme under discussion. The themes are: immigration, antisemitism, Israel and Zionism, life in the East-European shtetls (small villages), intermarriage and assimilation, religion, and the Holocaust. The majority of the works analyzed are American-made.
Among the findings of this study is that antisemitism has been touched upon rarely; the 1947 classic, Gentleman’s Agreement, is still the yardstick by which such works as School Ties (1992), and Quiz Show (1994) are being judged. And the truth is that, while the older classic manages to penetrate deeply into this sensitive question, the later works only skim the surface. Also, it is clear that Hollywood steered away from Israel; while in the 1960's and 1970's Israel presented the world a picture of courage and moral justice, the prolonged occupation and treatment of the Palestinians, have created controversies that film producers were averse to engage in. On the other hand, Hollywood has been rather receptive, and generally positive, in its treatment of orthodoxy and Hasidism, as evidenced in The Chosen(1982), Yentl (1983), and A Stranger Among Us (1992). One area where Hollywood has disappointed is the Holocaust. While it is true that it has produced Judgement at Nurenberg (1961), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959),and Schindler’s List, (1993), all very influential films, the rest of the field is a collection of works dealing with marginal issues, and , regretfully, in some cases, turning the subject matter into pure sensationalism.
As this study concluded, many new works dealing with the Jewish experience-antisemitism, Holocaust, and post-holocaust issues, assimilation, exile and life in Israel, were coming out. This is a clear indication that this is a subject of great interest to film makers, and it seems, to viewers all over the world.
Pellow, C. Kenneth
1995 0-7734-9067-1 380 pages
This book shows how films are useful as literary criticism. From an examination of what will and will not "translate" into film from print, one learns much about a novel's structure and methodology, its themes, narratology, and other aspects of fictions. Novels/films include The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Sterile Cuckoo, Catch-22, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Room With a View, Ordinary People, more.
Stone, Rob
2004 0-7734-6429-8 312 pages
This study explores the meaning and importance of flamenco in the works of two of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century Spanish culture, the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and the film-maker Carlos Saura. Lorca and Saura shared a fascination for flamenco as a medium for the existential ideology of the marginalized and disenfranchised and this work evaluates the development of these themes through a close, contextual study of their works, which are linked explicitly by Saura’s film adaptation of Lorca’s Bodas de sangre and, more profoundly, by their use of flamenco to express ideas of sexual and political marginalization in pre- and post-Francoist Spain respectively. The study demonstrates that an understanding of the symbolism, visual style, characters, themes and performance system of flamenco is key to a greater understanding of the social, sexual, political and existential themes in the works of Lorca and Saura, and that this in turn allows for an original and revealing analysis of the evolution of flamenco and the development of modern Spain.
Callens, Johan
1997 0-7734-8653-4 182 pages
Throughout his career, Sam Shepard has demonstrated a preoccupation with national identity, myths and symbols. The focus of the present study, The Bodyguard (1973), was commissioned by Tony Richardson, a film adaptation of Middleton and Rowley's classic English play, with its central love-hate relationship. The screen adaptation is presented here as a counterhegemonic appropriation of the canonical text through an assertion of Shepard's American identity and a vindication of his popular roots. The adaptation critically inscribes the tension Shepard experiences between national idea(l)s and a multicultural reality into the plot, themes and imagery of the early modern play, besides exemplifying and thematizing the postmodern fusion of high and low culture.
Klein, Holger
1997 0-7734-8502-3 524 pages
Part of a multi-volume series of yearbooks covering works by Shakespeare. This volume deals with film versions of "Hamlet", including topics such as Hamlet's ghost on the screen, Kenneth Branagh's interpolations in "Hamlet", Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" and Hamlet as a woman. Topics raised include comic uses of the tragedy, the portrayl of "Hamlet"'s ghost on screen and the poetic and dramatic uses of cookery in Shakespeare's plays.
Eriksson, Edward
2014 0-7734-4257-X 204 pages
Written as a companion piece to complement Professor Eriksson’s prior groundbreaking analysis, The Appearance of the Mythic Hero in the Twelve Seasons of Nature, this text, focusing on the heroine’s experience, does more than just provide the other half to the hero’s journey. Instead, The Heroine In Literature and Filam as Expressive of the Twelve Natural Seasons further develops Eriksson’s original insight in a thought-provoking analysis that comprehensively details the correspondences between the dramas of human relationships and the seasons of life that shape the feminine quest for fulfillment within a larger cosmological paradigm.
The heroine in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. Her behavior exhibits, symbolically, the response of the earth to the sun at a given time of the year, beginning at the March equinox and proceeding through twelve seasons. She assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. Her conflicts, successes, and failures reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on, in an aesthetic development that converts traditional mythic dynamics, based in agriculture, into story lines in ancient and modern configurations. Her character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season as reinterpreted into the drama of human relationships.
Ruiz, Manuela
2013 0-7734-3940-4 452 pages
This text examines the transformative and countercultural nature of romantic comedies of the 1950s.
It is the first to analyze the transformative and countercultural nature of romantic comedies from the 1950s, a genre heretofore considered largely uncritical of the then-dominant culture.
McDonald, Sarah
2011 0-7734-3946-3 216 pages
This text is the first to move beyond the traditional implementation of anthropophagy by using the theoretical construct of cannibalism to examine the role of popular cinema in shaping the nation’s identity and the changing pressures on national cinema in the current global environment of cultural production.
Dasilva, Fabio B.
2008 0-7734-5156-0 204 pages
This book examines three common types of dramatic communication as cultural objects in light of its historical, social, and cultural context. After considering the critique of the classic foundations of Western aesthetic theory and the collapse of the grand narrative, the book explores the contributions of linguistics, hermeneutics, Theodor Adorno, and the School of Frankfurt to the study of Aesthetics. The work not only demonstrates the relevance of these theories in the analysis of cultural products, but also the significance of linking art to its social and historical reality.
Jackson, Andrew
2007 0-7734-5498-5 304 pages
This collection of essays explores the mosaic of East Asian cinema by focusing on issues of identity, history and trans-regional cultural flow within this dynamic region. The argument of the editors is firstly, cinematic cross-pollination within East Asian film has been a constant since 1945, and second, any discussion of the complex identity of East Asia and its national cinemas must consider regional historical issues. These arguments run counter to recent literature published in the field of East Asian cinema that claim responses to Western globalization and modernization are the shaping forces for Asian cultural identity.
Matz, Maria R.
2012 0-7734-2922-0 280 pages
In the films of Pedro Almodóvar one experiences a vivid representation of Spanish life. His films are discussed here in lieu of gender relations, power dynamics, Spanish cultural identity, and inter-textually with other directors such as Alfred Hitchcock. The essays are written in both English and Spanish. They try to bring together a broad variety of interpretations to his popular films. Many articles deal with issues of gender and representations of cultural iconography from Catholicism on love and death.
Through a variety of authors and angles, as well as in two languages, this volume opens new perspectives on the films of Pedro Almodóvar. This work portrays how Almodóvar reaches into Spanish history and utilizes social changes that followed the fall of Franco to form his aesthetic creations. The book links the transformations of Spanish society and that of the evolution, if not the maturity of the filmmaker as he observes a society that is finally free to be and become what it desires. Each chapter reveals how the audience can witness the auteur’s maturation at the same pace as that of the Spanish society. Just like Almodóvar’s films, often criticized for their complex plots, today’s Spain is a complex mosaics that is constantly evolving and adjusting to the world that surrounds it. If many questions about what defines and inspires the filmmaker’s personal vision of the world still remain, one thing is for sure: the Almodóvar phenomenon has established an international image of Spain that is open and yet traditional, vibrant, and dynamic.
Rinke, Andrea
2006 0-7734-5684-8 386 pages
Some of the most successful and controversial East German films were produced during the 1970s, many of which featured a female protagonist. These films about women – directed almost exclusively by men – were in many respects so unique to the DEFA (the state sponsored East German film corporation) as to constitute a specific genre: the DEFA Frauenfilm (women’s film). Why did the female role under socialism hold such an attraction for the filmmakers?
Drawing on mostly unpublished archive materials, the author traces how the ideological discourse regarding the depiction of women in the cinema changed in response to international political developments, national trends and cultural policies.
In the first major study in English of women on the East German screen, the author argues that these women’s films did not merely challenge assumptions and desires regarding women as women, but that they became vehicles to critically represent the relationship between the individual and society in the GDR.
A close reading and contextualized analysis of eight representative Gegenwartsfilme (films engaged in the social reality of everyday life in the contemporary GDR) is employed to establish the significance of the female DEFA protagonist – essential for any discussion of East German cinema as a part of German film history.
Geraci, Melissa Wye
2003 0-7734-6629-0 196 pages
This is the first historical analysis that reveals the depth and scope of the contribution that the Kennedy family, professional staff, and outside collaborators made in creating the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign image. Documenting the origins of this ground-breaking strategy as the combined result of both 1920s Hollywood film production and propaganda films in Europe during the 1930s, it sheds new light on the effectiveness of the Kennedy influence during the 1960s and up to the present. The Kennedy boundary-spanning approach to the development and dispersal of public/private information has since become an integral component of media-based politics. The business of enhancing the aesthetics of the run for the presidency through pictorial and cinematic representation has become an essential contributing factor in many of the more controversial aspects of Hollywood filmmaking, as well as a governmental propaganda resource. The work particularly examines the campaign film The New Frontier. With illustrations.
Chirumbolo, Paolo
2013 0-7734-4550-1 432 pages
This book shows how landscape, place, and territory play a crucial role in all forms of aesthetic communication. Whether real, mythological, fantastic, allegorical, or symbolic, they are essential constituents of the verbal and visual construction of an artwork. The authors show how space determines narrative plots and shapes emotional, rational, and social tendencies of any aesthetic expression. The analysis has shifted from the principles of mimesis to recent critical attention given to specific perspectives in different cultural lenses. This volume, edited by two enterprising scholars especially interested in mapping new trends in Italian literature and cinema, is a brilliant collection of theoretical and analytical essays. These writings explore the issues of aesthetics from a plurality of angles related to the literary and cinematic treatment of space.
Walker-Morrison, Deborah
2012 0-7734-2630-2 284 pages
This text tracks changes in French critical theory on the topic of subjectivity and analyzes how these theoretical developments apply to the films of Alain Resnais. It claims that the purpose of Resnais’ oeuvre is the transition from modernist tendencies towards absolute mastery and control, to postmodern, deconstructionist movements towards a de-centered storyline and subject.
Egloff, Karin M.
2007 0-7734-5436-5 216 pages
This book analyzes the representation of adolescents in contemporary French cinema. Moving beyond the stereotypical filmic versions of young people, this study examines modern male and female adolescence on film, while also giving attention to the themes of sex and romance, race and class, power and empowerment, education, and generation gaps. These themes are explored by looking at ten films, each by a different Francophone filmmaker, to see how they construct and portray adolescence and how commonly accepted ideas about this age group are enforced or challenged, questioning, in the end, whether these directors have succeeded in offering their audiences a healthier alternative to an all too easy homogenization of adolescence. In French.
Rorato, Laura
2009 0-7734-3900-5 400 pages
This volume examines the role of Gianni Celati in shaping Italian fiction and culture since the 1960s as a leading narrator, writer, scholar, translator and filmmaker. In Italian
Lee, C. J. P.
1999 0-7734-8184-2 284 pages
Mythic Hero's Appearance in the Twelve Seasons of Nature: His Dramatic Action in Literature and Film
Eriksson, Edward2012 0-7734-4082-8 172 pages
The hero in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. His behavior exhibits, symbolically, the relationship of the sun to the earth in twelve phases. It begins at the March equinox and proceeds through the natural year. He assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. His conflicts and successes reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on. It creates an aesthetic development that primarily converts traditional mythic dynamics (based in agriculture) into story lines. His character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season in a modern cultural context. As all works of literature and film either indicate or suggest a seasonal moment, all heroes as will be shown by reference to over a hundred novels, plays, short stories, and films, are characterized by the force of aesthetic sublimation in sympathy with their seasonal set.
Ben-Shaul, Nitzan
1997 0-7734-8608-9 156 pages
This study presents a comprehensive analysis of Israeli film and society, in particular, the mythical expression of siege, from 1948 to the present. It examines the Israeli-Palestine conflict, Zionist-Socialism, Zionist Statism, post Six Day War Euphoria, the Israeli Left, and Ethnic Fusion vs. Ethnic Fission.
Burton, Aaron V.
2014 0-7734-4367-3 168 pages
An excellent historical study contributing to the areas of religion, pop culture and rhetoric of Christian themed films about Jesus Christ. The author provides an added dimension of context to his analysis by discussing the cultural milieu that influenced the production, the marketing and the portrayal of the Christ character in these selected films.
Dr Burton’s book discusses popular film interpretations of Christ’s life and how the films’ narratives function rhetorically in an attempt to understand the ways that films about Jesus aid in spreading the message of the Gospels.
Sevastakis, Michael
2006 0-7734-5857-3 440 pages
This study deals with an analysis of 13 of Russ Meyer’s major films produced between 1959 (The Immoral Mr. Teas) and 1979 (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens), exploring the narrative voices present with and exterior to the texts. Beginning with a study of the decade in which Meyer first produced his films, the work proceeds to a discussion on film as a form of narration and then to describing the three basic voices controlling the stories: the “extradiegetic” narrator who assumes the role in movie-making of the voice beyond the fictive voices of all the characters in the films; the character or “homodiegetic” narrator functioning in his own story as an actor within the film; and the “intradiegetic” narrator or voice-over narrator who is not a character in the story but whose role is that of commentator. The reading of these three basic narrators within the films will illustrate how they contribute to the calculated humor and/or moral ambiguity in exploiting fundamental dichotomies of carnality and Puritanism that constitute the director’s distinctive style. The book’s appeal is primarily to scholars of film criticism, semiotics, and social history as well as censorship and first amendment rights.
Weinberger, Gabriele
1992 0-7734-9851-6 260 pages
An in-depth analysis of three pivotal works for students of German film history and post-war culture as it leads to the present political developments, the study puts films by West German film directors Helma Sanders-Brahms, Jutta Brückner, and Marianne Rosenbaum in the context of both German film politics/feminist film theory and the West German cultural, socio-political context of the last decade. Their films take an insistent close-up look at the average German family during the 1950s and how the fascist experience affected the interpersonal relationships and German children's upbringing in the post-fascist years, showing the deep-reaching transformations individual Germans and the family structure had undergone. The films' points of departure are distinctly new and intend to go beyond the known both in film and in patriarchal culture.
Robinson, Carol L.
2012 0-7734-2662-0 464 pages
This is a collection of essays that study the contemporary cultural depictions of medievalism. The book attempts to unravel distortions that tend to domesticate the era and represent it as an extension of modern life. Several authors claim that modernity is so radically different to medieval life that we can only view the past as an extension of the present, rather than as radically different. The present distorts, and often politicizes the past, and these essays explore how everything from commercials, and video games, to the war on terror can contain elements of neo-medieval revisionism. Some authors argue that even though nobody alive today has a lived experience of the period, and holding an authentic medieval experience is almost impossible, there seems to be a sort of nostalgia about medieval times that indicates dissatisfaction with contemporary life.
Maddox, Margaret Joan
2008 0-7734-4945-0 280 pages
Analyzes how Joan of Arc’s heroism is deliberately undermined in film through the repetition of interpretations of her which enforce conventional patriarchal constructs and limit her heroism. This book contains four black and white photographs and five color photographs.
Christiansen, Steen Ledet
2018 1-4955-0712-2 108 pages
Dr. Christiansen's study looks at the ways that five science fiction stories, Splice, Pandorum, 28 Days Later, and The Windup Girl, look at the notions of humanity and trans humanism. The author argues that science fiction is the perfect genre to examine real philosophical questions about the human condition, its past, and its future.
Barrueto, Jorge J.
2008 0-7734-5138-2 288 pages
This study explores the aesthetic, social and political aspects present in Latin American cinema as portrayed in major representative films from the region, and addresses the study of film in Latin America in the context of great historical moments. The issues of race, gender, primitivism, Otherness, slavery, immigration, social change, and their underpinning ideologies, inspire the presentations of these films. In Spanish. This book contains five black and white photographs and five color photographs.
Erickson, Leslie Goss
2006 0-7734-5911-1 260 pages
This study explores the concept of every man and every woman as hero. Using three models of the heroic journey, this book identifies and delineates female and male heroes in a variety of works and genres of postmodern American culture. Joseph Campbell’s thesis as set forth in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) maintains that regardless of manifestation, the heroic journey is one core myth describing venturing human beings as they progress through levels of consciousness to individuation, self-actualization, and enlightenment. Exploring that assertion, the study also uses two post-Campbell models, Carol S. Pearson’s archetypal model The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (1986) and Susan A. Lichtman’s gender specific model, Life Stages of Woman’s Heroic Journey: A Study of the Origins of the Great Goddess Archetype (1991). These theories are applied to twentieth-century works from various cultures – Latin American, African American, and Anglo-American – and various genres – literature, film and drama. This work will appeal to scholars in a variety of areas including those researching identity, psychological development, and consciousness evolution in literary characters and how that development is influenced by the cultures and systems within which those characters live.
Lynch, Audrey L.
2009 0-7734-4662-1 128 pages
This study examines the educational, professional and social similarities in the backgrounds of John Steinbeck and James Dean. Both men struggled with the intellectual limits of small towns, and difficult relations with their parents.
Claydon, E. Anna
2005 0-7734-5972-3 348 pages
This book challenges the received wisdom of approaches to both a “crisis” in masculinity and British cinema. Taking four key case study films which can be said to typify areas of British film production during the 1960’s, this book opens out how widely difference methodologies can be used to analyse the British film as text in contrast to the primarily contextual analyses of British cinema of the period found elsewhere. In addition, she argues that the dominant mode of analyzing masculinity, via a “crisis” needs to be re-examined and the terminology returned to its original sense rather than the pop psychological comprehension which places the blames for any problem with masculinity upon feminism. As such, she seeks to reframe a “crisis” of masculinity (the psycho-sexual) as a crisis of masculinism (the socio-political) whilst concurrently examining individual masculinities as an abjected relationship based upon the social and the Other rather than the feminist and the emasculated.
Haque, Mazharul
2007 0-7734-5511-6 220 pages
This book examines historical events related to the Chinese Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, focusing mainly on the work of the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers who experienced the Cultural Revolution first hand and produced movies about it, though attention is also given to films from Third, Fourth, and Sixth Generation directors. Assuming that fictional films can be seen as an agent enhancing our historical understanding, this study, employing an interdisciplinary approach involving history, philosophy, literature, and ideology, and using the Chinese Cultural Revolution as an example, attempts to examine how such a theory of film might fit into a philosophy of history, while also aiming to find places where film and history intersect.
Dacey-Groth, Camilla E.
2009 0-7734-4739-3 184 pages
This study discusses representations of slavery in post-civil-rights fiction and film as reflections of public policy and opinion concerning race in the United States. These texts and films are used to discuss the twentieth-century historiography of slavery, tying together popular culture and historical studies to important political and cultural events and trends.
Parker, Juli L.
2011 0-7734-1458-4 444 pages
This collection examines the meaning, construction and deconstruction of the murdering woman. These essays suggest that the ways in which gender, race, class and sexuality play into representations of women murderers is key to understanding the patriarchal underpinnings of our judicial system as they apply to women criminals.
Kraft, Helga W.
2012 0-7734-2556-X 360 pages
A collection of essays that newly examines the experiences of German refugees in World War II. Studies include the use of diverse media
Kerner, Aaron
2007 0-7734-5410-1 340 pages
When attempting to represent a catastrophic event in history the tendency is to disavowal the event by referring to it as “unimaginable,” or otherwise such events are assigned to the domain of “fiction” or “fantasy.” For example, in response to 9/11 and the images of the planes flying into buildings, many responded “it was like I was watching a movie.” How then, when our knee-jerk response is to assign catastrophic events to the “incomprehensible” or the domain of utter fantasy, do we convey the reality of these events? What rhetorical strategies are at our disposal? How are catastrophic events, such as the Holocaust or Hiroshima represented, when we no longer have an immediate relationship to them? When the last survivors of these catastrophic events are gone, how will we relate to representations of these events? What rhetorical strategies will prove most useful in conveying the historical significance of these events, even when the physical traces are gone? This book addresses these questions.
Coury, David N.
2004 0-7734-6320-8 218 pages
Since the early 1980s, there has been a decided trend in German literature and film toward a restitution of the storyteller and traditional forms of narration. This book discusses the crisis of narration that led to the decline of storytelling as well as the recent return to stories and more traditional forms of narration. Specifically, the author argues that the novels of Peter Handke and the films of Wim Wenders are representative of this larger paradigmatic shift.
The first half of the study presents an overview and discussion of the philosophical discourses leading to the so-called death of narrative in the modernist and postmodern context and then the rebirth of neo-narrative works at the end of the 20th century. The second chapter analyzes the importance of Handke's works within the context of post-war literature, discussing first his rejection of narrative and then his embracing of the story beginning in the early 1980s. The second half of the study presents the same phenomenon in German cinema, discussing first the importance of narrative in German and European cinema, as well as the changing role it has played in the German cinema throughout this century. The following chapter uses Wenders' aesthetics and narrative constructs to detailing the shift beginning in the 1980s from a style of filmmaking influenced by the Italian neo-realists and the French nouvelle vague toward a more narrative cinema. In the conclusion, the author speculates on the possible reasons for this new-found popularity of the story and the shift away from non-narrative forms. In doing so, the author attempts to show how storytelling is central to questions of modernity and technology, history, identity and redemption.
Walton, Jennifer L.
2008 0-7734-5080-7 144 pages
This study provides a rhetorical criticism of movies about national politics, with a primary focus on the value judgments, political consciousness and political implications surrounding the films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Candidate (1972), The Contender (2000), Wag the Dog (1997), Power (1986), and Primary Colors (1998).
McClure, Arthur F.
1988 0-88946-098-1 240 pages
Covers Reagan's early years in radio, films, and television and his formative role as President of the Screen Actors Guild. Also features complete cast lists for the films of Ronald and Nancy Reagan and lists of books and articles on Reagan and his family.
Seed, David
1992 0-7734-9643-2 188 pages
This study gives a novel-by-novel analysis of Wurlitzer's works, relating his fiction to the writings of the Beats, Beckett, and other influences. Each of his novels centers around a literal or metaphorical West where the cultural bearings of the protagonists are brought under pressure, returning again and again to issues of cultural breakdown and isolation. A separate chapter is devoted to his work for the cinema and the strong continuity between his `road movies' and his fiction. This is the first critical study of Wurlitzer's work and has been prepared with the help of the novelist himself.
Skerry, Philip J.
2005 0-7734-6051-9 448 pages
This study places the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) within its cinematic, sociological and critical contexts. It also locates the film within the personal and professional experiences of the author. The methodology depends upon a melding of first person narration with a close analysis of the film's mise en scene and montage, as these techniques evolve in Hitchcock's oeuvre and culminate in the seminal shower scene. The study also incorporates lengthy interviews with the star of the film, Janet Leigh; with the scriptwriter, Joseph Stefano; with the assistant director, Hilton Green; with the sound designer, Danny Greene; with the assistant editor, Terry Williams; and with the editor of the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, Amy Duddleston. The book culminates with first person accounts of the initial viewing of Psycho's shower scene from filmmakers and from Hitchcock scholars and fans.
Zoller, James A.
1998 0-7734-2833-X
Focuses on particulars, moments in normal activities that become larger than themselves under the lens of the poem. Each poem comprises a moment of reflection with the confusions of life; each needs its own space for contemplation in the same way that a small painting wants its own space on the white wall. James A. Zoller has lived in rural western New York since 1984. He teaches writing and literature at Houghton College. In addition to writing and publishing poetry he writes a monthly column for the local newspaper, The Wellsville Daily Reporter.
Wiegmann, Mira
2003 0-7734-6891-9 312 pages
This study employs Jungian and post-Jungian hermeneutics to address psychological, social and political perspectives in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, M. Butterfly, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. These plays and their Broadway productions contain mythic narratives and dreams that Jung described as visionary drama. Peter Brooks’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream stages Jungian archetypes that bridge modern and postmodern production sensibilities and aesthetics. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly deconstructs patriarchal personae and stages projection and introjection. Terrence McNally’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, an adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel, demonstrates the fluidity of meaning in postmodern archetypes. This book will engage theatre scholars and practitioners as well as scholars of popular culture and interdisciplinary studies. It models archetypal hermeneutics as a useful analytical tool for postmodern performance criticism. Illustrated with production photographs.
Auger, Emily E.
2010 0-7734-3668-5 476 pages
A representative selection of 225 Tech-Noir films released between 1970 and 2005, each of which is briefly summarized and discussed in relation to other films of this type- fully cross-referenced.
An excellent compendium to The Development of the Tech-Noir Film: A Theory of the Development of Popular Genres in Fiction and Film
Witcher, Russ
2004 0-7734-6232-5 107 pages
This critical analysis of director Oliver Stone's Nixon argues that the screenplay and film are early attempts in American cinema to put the life of Richard Nixon in proper historical perspective. Although known for his provocative and controversial approach in his films toward people and events of the 1960s and '70s in America, Stone has delivered an evenhanded account of the impact of Nixon on American history. This book is appropriate for anyone interested in the Cold War, American film, or popular art and politics and adds to the study of the media's depiction of history and historical figures.
Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya Q.
2010 0-7734-3711-8 116 pages
The South Asian dancing-beloved’s courtesanship, her enigmatic presence, her romantic allure, and her socio-economic position are all explored within the framework of this book. This text presents English translations of major Urdu (and a couple of Poorbi) lyrics from classic South Asian films.
Schulz-Cruz, Bernard
2010 0-7734-1417-7 268 pages
This book explores the accommodations made by the eye of the camera in its search for a homosexual body and gay identity. An analysis of Mexican movies produced during the last third of the 20th century reveals the emergence, the evolution, the articulation, the subversion and the liberation of gay images in Mexican cinema, but also a necessary addition for the full understanding those images in the context of changing Mexican society.
The existing studies surrounding homosexuality in Mexican cinema criticize the stereotypical representations of the gay personality. What has not been consciously analyzed is the cinematographic and aesthetic displacement that was gradually construting the gay male imaginary between 1970 and 1999 and projecting the imaginary into th 21st century.
This book publicly presents gay thematic material and recognizes the existence of the other, be it a representation of the virile, effeminate, or ostracized, and of a gay body that expresses itself and relates to the world differently.
Taub, Michael
2023 1-4955-1046-5 196 pages
This book is an expansion of the author's
Russell, Dennis Eugene
2011 0-7734-1490-8 256 pages
Since 1989, Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke has earned the reputation of one of the most provocative and subversive auteurs in contemporary European art cinema. The focus of this book is Haneke's first four German-language films that represent a radical director's attempt to locate the root causes of a pervasive moral and psychological deterioration that has characterized Western culture since the latter stages of the twentieth century. Calling upon multiple theoretical approaches, this book entails a close-reading examination of Haneke's following works: The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), and Funny Games (1997). These films have been selected for analysis because they encompass the major themes and philosophical concerns threading throughout Haneke's oeuvre: a nightmare vision of the First World teetering on the brink of catastrophe while awash in the excesses of advanced capitalism, obsessive consumerism, and media and technological dominance. This is not activist filmmaking in the sense of evoking change, but instead a radical cinema propelled by Haneke's aggressive methods of cultural vivisection. The book's target audiences are film scholars, graduate students in the fields of cinema analysis and critical studies, and art-cinema aficionados.
Raw, Laurence
2009 0-7734-3876-9 584 pages
This anthology covers new ground in the field of adaptation studies, specifically, as a branch of American Studies that not only encompasses literature and visual media, but also a wide-range of subject areas including, but not limited to, history, political science and cultural/ethnic studies. By looking at adaptation specifically in relation to the United States, the book investigates a variety of culturally and historically transformative strategies, as well showing how the process of adaptation has been influenced by social, ideological and political factors both inside and outside the United States.
Drumin, William A.
2004 0-7734-6292-9 442 pages
Although Alfred Hitchcock has been dead for over 24 years, his films still command widespread public interest and appeal. As true classics, they exhibit a persistent power to engage and enchant that transcends the limitations of time and culture. This work explores on a basic level the sources of the dramatic power of Hitchcock's films.
An introductory chapter gives a brief outline of Hitchcock's career and the primary features of his approach to filmmaking. A concluding chapter surveys the elements of Hitchcock's humanistic vision. Two appendices illustrate Hitchcock's power to reveal inner character through cinematic means.
Through a scene-by-scene analysis of 14 major films, this book examines the modes of cinematic expression through which Hitchcock deploys themes and motifs that express profound philosophical/humanistic concerns and through which he establishes enduring contact with his audience in memorable images, compositions, and montages. For each film, a summary commentary draws together the themes and characterizations to help appreciate the film as a dramatic unity and to relate the film to Hitchcock's broader vision. This work will be invaluable to all in film studies.
Magallanes-Blanco, Claudia
2008 0-7734-5100-5 304 pages
This study examines the use of video technology as an alternative communication medium within a dialogic framework. It draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and employs a dialogic method that emphasizes diversity. The work takes as its focus the lives and work of a sample of significant independent video-makers on the indigenous Zapatista rebellion. By analysing dialogues within and around video technology it argues these encounters with contemporary events in Mexican history are contributing to an ongoing process of transformation in Mexican consciousness.
Grieb, Margit
2012 0-7734-2919-0 216 pages
Addresses the lack of scholarship on the impact of new media on German film. It provides analysis that focuses on cinematic practices and productions and how they have been affected by a variety of technologies. The author narrows her critical focus to specific examples that illustrate very particular effects. She focuses on filmmakers who are working outside of the established mainstream Hollywood studio production system. There is also usage of Bertolt Brecht’s theories on new media and theatre to better understand how technologies impact performance art. The book is most interested in how artists re-invent, re-define, or re-discover the form and content of the conventional medium of film and the cinema as an institution through the use of technological innovations.
Earle, Neil
1994 0-7734-9406-5 248 pages
The study advances the concept of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of popular culture. Drawing upon archetypal theory as expounded by Jung and Frye, culture history, literary criticism, and the popular culture theories of John Fiske as they intersect with postmodern and deconstructionist interpretations, it links the conservative discipline of history to the chariot of the popular. It also makes the theories of literary critics more accessible to the average college student, who is familiar with the plot of The Wizard of Oz. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of Film Studies, Religion and Literature, American Studies, and Culture History.