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The portrayal of clergy, saints, missionaries, monks, and other spiritual leaders dates back to the very beginnings of motion pictures and television. Over the years, filmmakers have portrayed religious figures as heroes and villains, sinners and saints, and nearly everything in between. Through their works, filmmakers have influenced how society viewed these religious figures and, by extension, religion itself. This work details over 900 films and television series made from the 1890s through 2003 in which a religious figure plays a prominent or recurring role, or in which a character poses as a religious figure. For each motion picture, full filmographic data are provided--including title, studio, running time, year of release, director, producer, writer, and cast--along with a synopsis focusing on the role of the religious figure. Television series are covered in a separate section. For each show, the entry includes the title under which the show was commonly known; the original broadcast network; the years the show ran, running time, and cast; and a brief discussion of the religious character's role in the overall series. Extensively indexed.
The history of Italian cinema includes, in addition to the renowned auteurs, a number of peculiar and lesser-known filmmakers. While their artistry was often plagued with production setbacks, their works--influenced by poetry, playwriting, advertising, literature, comics and a nonconformist, sometimes antagonistic attitude--were original and thought provoking. Drawing from official papers and original scripts, this book includes much previously unpublished information on the works and lives of post-World War II filmmakers Pier Carpi, Alberto Cavallone, Riccardo Ghione, Giulio Questi, Brunello Rondi, Paolo Spinola, Augusto Tretti and Nello Vegezzi.
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"Epic" films, those concerned with monumental events and larger-than-life characters, cover the period from the Creation to the A.D. 1200s and have been churned out by Hollywood and overseas studios since the dawn of filmmaking. Cecil B. DeMille, a master of the genre, hit upon the perfect mixture of sex, splendor, and the sacred to lure audiences to his epic productions. The 355 film entries include casts and credits, plot synopsis, and narratives on the making of the films. There are 190 photographs in this editon.
Produced in Italy from the turn of the 20th century, "sword and sandal" or peplum films were well received in the silent era and attained great popularity in the 1960s following the release of Hercules (1959), starring Mr. Universe Steve Reeves. A global craze for Bronze Age fantasy-adventures ensued and the heroic exploits of Hercules, Maciste, Samson and Goliath were soon a mainstay of American drive-ins and second-run theaters (though mainly disparaged by critics). By 1965, the genre was eclipsed by the spaghetti western, yet the 1960s peplum canon continues to inspire Hollywood epics. This filmography provides credits, cast and comments for dozens of films from 1908 through 1990.
In an eclectic career spanning four decades, Italian director Riccardo Freda (1909-1999) produced films of remarkable technical skill and powerful visual style, including the swashbuckler Black Eagle (1946), an adaptation of Les Miserables (1947), the peplum Theodora, Slave Empress (1954) and a number of cult-favorite Gothic and horror films such as I Vampiri (1957), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963). Freda was first championed in the 1960s by French critics who labeled him "the European Raoul Walsh," and enjoyed growing critical esteem over the years. This book covers his life and career for the first time in English, with detailed analyses of his films and exclusive interviews with his collaborators and family.
Forged from the many conversations Charlotte Chandler conducted with director Federico Fellini over the course of fourteen years, and featuring a forward by Billy Wilder, I, Fellini is a portrait of one of Italy's greatest filmmakers in his own words. In the book, Fellini recounts the stories behind his classic films La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, La Strada, and others, describing the inspirations from which they arose and the struggles to get them filmed. He also speaks at length on actors Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, and Anna Magnani, and on directors Roberto Rossellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni.
This book analyzes a range of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, focusing on new readings that engage with classical and (post)modern studies of his work and the troubling literary relationship that he had with T.S. Eliot. Whilst the book examines Poe’s influence in Spain, and how his figure has been marketed to young and adult Spanish reading audiences, it also explores the profound impact that Poe had on other audiences, such as in America, Greece, and Japan, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The essays attest to Poe’s well-deserved reputation, his worldwide legacy, and his continued presence in global literature. This book will appeal particularly to university teachers, Poe scholars, graduate students, and general readers interested in Poe’s oeuvre.
From Sean Connery to Roy Rogers, from comedy to political satire, films that include espionage as a plot device run the gamut of actors and styles. More than just "spy movies," espionage films have evolved over the history of cinema and American culture, from stereotypical foreign spy themes, to patriotic star features, to the Cold War plotlines of the sixties, and most recently to the sexy, slick films of the nineties. This filmography comprehensively catalogs movies involving elements of espionage. Each entry includes release date, running time, alternate titles, cast and crew, a brief synopsis, and commentary. An introduction analyzes the development of these films and their reflection of the changing culture that spawned them.