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This is the first full-length study in any language of the most significant film director of Italian Neorealism. Peter Brunette combines close analyses of Roberto Rossellini's formal and narrative style with a thorough account of his position in the political and cultural landscape of postwar Italy. More than forty films are explored, including Open City, Paisan, Voyage to Italy, The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, and films made in the director's later years that documented crucial epochs in human history. Brunette's book is based on eight years of research, during which he interviewed members of the director's family as well as Rossellini himself. Brunette also draws on an enormous body of Eur...
A broad introduction to CinemaScope and other widescreen movies, including full credits for 85 sample films, a description of various anamorphic processes, plus background information for movie fans.
"This study considers Italian filmmaking during the Fascist era and offers an original and revealing approach to the interwar years. Steven Ricci directly confronts a long-standing dilemma faced by cultural historians: while made during a period of totalitarian government, these films are neither propagandistic nor openly "Fascist." Instead, the Italian Fascist regime attempted to build ideological consensus by erasing markers of class and regional difference and by circulating terms for an imaginary national identity. Cinema and Fascism investigates the complex relationship between the totalitarian regime and Italian cinema. It looks at the films themselves, the industry, and the role of cinema in daily life, and offers new insights into this important but neglected period in cinema history." -- Book cover.
This invaluable resource by one of the world's leading experts in French cinema presents a coherent overview of French cinema in the 20th century and its place and function in French society. Each filmography includes 101 films listed chronologically (Volume 1: 1929–1939 and Volume 2: 1940–1958) and provides accessible points of entry into the remarkable world of 20th-century French cinema. All entries contain a list of cast members and characters, production details, an overview of the film's cultural and historical significance, and a critical summary of the film's plot and narrative structure. Each volume includes an appendix listing rewards earned and an extensive reference list for further reading and research. A third volume, covering the period 1958–1974, is forthcoming.
Horror has been one of the most spectacular and controversial genres in both cinema and fiction - its wild excesses relished by some, vilified by many others. Often defiantly marginal, it nevertheless inhabits the very fabric of everyday life, providing us with ways of imagining and classifying our world; what is evil and what is good; what is monstrous and what is 'normal'; what can be seen and what should remain hidden. The Horror Reader brings together 29 key articles to examine the enduring resonance of horror across culture. Spanning the history of horror in literature and film and discussing texts from Britain, the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and Hong Kong, it explores a diver...
This work identifies patterns in the fields of character, narrative, and setting in the French cinema of the early sound period.
In this work of feminist film criticism, Mary Ann Doane examines questions of sexual difference and knowledge in cinematic, theoretical, and psychoanalytic discourses. "Femmes Fatales" examines Freud, the female spectator, the meaning of the close-up, and the nature of stardom. Doane's analyses of such figures as Pabst's Lulu and Rita Hayworth's Gilda trace the thematics and mechanics of maskes, masquerade, and veiling, with specific attention to the form and technology of the cinema. Working through and against the intellectual frameworks of post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory, Doane interrogates cinematic and theoretical claims to truth about women which rely on judgements about v...
From Chaplin’s tramp to the Bathing Beauties, from madcap chases to skyscraper perils, slapstick comedy supplied many of the most enduring icons of American cinema in the silent era. This collection of fourteen essays by prominent film scholars challenges longstanding critical dogma and offers new conceptual frameworks for thinking about silent comedy’s place in film history and American culture. The contributors discuss a broad range of topics including the contested theatrical or cinematic origins of slapstick; the comic spectacle of crazy technology and trick stunts; the filmmakers who shaped the style of early slapstick; and comedy’s implications for theories of film form and spectatorship. This volume is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and continued importance of a film genre at the heart of American cinema from its earliest days to today.
"In addition to being the first academic study of the giallo film in English, this book surveys more than fifty films of this subgenre. The works of twenty-five different filmmakers are considered, including Mario Bava and Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Pupi Avati, and Umberto Lenzi. Koven explores the interrelationships between these films; how one influences the others, how certain filmmakers take ideas and expand on them, and how those ideas are further transformed by other filmmakers. Koven also discusses the impact of the giallo on the later North American slasher genre."--BOOK JACKET.