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Noting that motherhood is a common metaphor for film production, Lucy Fischer undertakes the first investigation of how the topic of motherhood presents itself throughout a wide range of film genres. Until now discussions of maternity have focused mainly on melodramas, which, along with musicals and screwball comedies, have traditionally been viewed as "women's" cinema. Fischer defies gender-based classifications to show how motherhood has played a fundamental role in the overall cinematic experience. She argues that motherhood is often treated as a site of crisis--for example, the mother being blamed for the ills afflicting her offspring--then shows the tendency of certain genres to special...
Art Nouveau thrived from the late 1890s through the First World War. The international design movement reveled in curvilinear forms and both playful and macabre visions and had a deep impact on cinematic art direction, costuming, gender representation, genre, and theme. Though historians have long dismissed Art Nouveau as a decadent cultural mode, its tremendous afterlife in cinema proves otherwise. In Cinema by Design, Lucy Fischer traces Art Nouveau's long history in films from various decades and global locales, appreciating the movement's enduring avant-garde aesthetics and dynamic ideology. Fischer begins with the portrayal of women and nature in the magical "trick films" of the Spanish...
Grand, sensational, and exotic, Art Deco design was above all modern, exemplifying the majesty and boundless potential of a newly industrialized world. From department store window dressings to the illustrations in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs to the glamorous pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazar, Lucy Fischer documents the ubiquity of Art Deco in mainstream consumerism and its connection to the emergence of the "New Woman" in American society. Fischer argues that Art Deco functioned as a trademark for popular notions of femininity during a time when women were widely considered to be the primary consumers in the average household, and as the tactics of advertisers as well as the content o...
Signs of Life: Medicine and Cinema is the first single volume to consider the cinematic representation of medicine, medical science and the medical profession, and explores the political implications of the representations of doctors, nurses, patients, diseases and disabilities. The essays in this collection, from a wide range of film scholars and medical practitioners, also consider how formal qualities of cinema such as empirical observation, mise-en-sc'ne, propaganda and education, melodrama, documentary and narrative construction impact on our understanding of medical procedures and the public image of medicine.
How is the look of a film achieved? In Art Direction and Production Design, six outstanding scholars survey the careers of notable art directors, the influence of specific design styles, the key roles played by particular studios and films in shaping the field, the effect of technological changes on production design, and the shifts in industrial modes of organization. The craft’s purpose is to produce an overall pictorial “vision” for films, and in 1924 a group of designers formed the Cinemagundi Club—their skills encompassed set design, painting, decoration, construction, and budgeting. A few years later, in recognition of their contributions to filmmaking, the first Academy Awards...
Examines the fascinating ties between Surrealist artist René Magritte and the cinema.
Body Double explores the myriad ways that film artists have represented the creative process. In this highly innovative work, Lucy Fischer draws on a neglected element of auteur studies to show that filmmakers frequently raise questions about the paradoxes of authorship by portraying the onscreen writer. Dealing with such varied topics as the icon of the typewriter, the case of the writer/director, the authoress, and the omnipresent infirm author, she probes the ways in which films can tell a plausible story while contemplating the conditions and theories of their making. By examining many forms of cinema, from Hollywood and the international art cinema to the avant-garde, Fischer considers ...
This volume of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies provides a comprehensive overview of the field. Its international and interdisciplinary approach will have a broad appeal to those interested in this multifaceted subject. Provides a major collection of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies. Represents material under a variety of headings, including class, race, gender, queer theory, nation, stars, ethnography, authorship, and spectatorship. Offers an international approach to the subject, including coverage of topics such as genre, image, sound, editing, culture industries, early cinema, classical Hollywood, and TV relations and technology. Includes concise chapter-by-chapter accounts of the background and current approaches to each topic, followed by a prognostication on the future. Considers cinema studies in relation to other forms of knowledge, such as critical studies, anthropology, and literature.
Brings together several essays by seventeen scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. This volume shows us the significant ways that film has both grown in the context of the modern world and played a central role in reflecting and shaping our interactions with it.
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