This study explores the model derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, via Marxism and semiotics, of looking at film. It retraces the steps of film theory from ideological criticism of the late '60s to spectator studies in 1988 when the book was originally published. Psychoanalysis enables a discussion of the cinema's role as a social and political force and this book enters a discourse of the politics of representation. Reconstructing discussion of basic issues, the book addresses our instincts and defences in reacting to cinema, the similarity between mental processes and cinematic technique, narrative techniques and the 'cinematic apparatus'. Importantly, the book concerns itself with the concept of ideology and how the filmviewing experience engages the spectator in a complex net of stimuli presenting representations of an ideal world and the effect of this within film studies.

The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic--and frequently the most enduring--efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers--many of them eyewitnesses--have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies.

This encyclopedia includes 44 essays, each providing detailed information on an important film, song, or literary work about Vietnam. Each essay provides insights into the Vietnam-era experiences and views of the work's primary creative force, historical background on issues or events addressed in the work, discussion of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work, and sources for further information. This book also includes an appendix listing of more than 275 films, songs, and literary works dealing with the war.

Theodore Dreiser's dissection of the American dream, An American Tragedy, was hailed as the greatest novel of its generation. Now a classic of American literature, the story is one to which Hollywood has repeatedly returned.Hollywood's obsession with this tale of American greed, justice, religion and sexual hypocrisy stretches across the history of cinema. Some of cinema's greatest directors - Sergei Eisenstein, Josef von Sternberg and George Stevens - have attempted to bring this classic story to the screen. Subsequently, both Jean-Luc Godard and Woody Allen have returned to the story and to these earlier adaptations.Hollywood's American Tragedies is the first detailed study of this extraordinary sequence of adaptations. What it reveals is a history of Hollywood - from its politics to its cinematography - and, much deeper, of American culture and the difficulty of telling an American tragedy in the land of the American dream.

This book explores connections between the diverse ideas of Melanie Klein, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman. These ideas are explored in relation to their shared focus on imagination and through detailed readings of a number of Bergman's key films.

A key collection of essays that looks at the specific issues related to the documentary form. Questions addressed include `What is documentary?' and `How fictional is nonfiction?'

The flashback is a crucial moment in a film narrative, one that captures the cinematic expression of memory, and history. This author's wide-ranging account of this single device reveals it to be an important way of creating cinematic meaning. Taking as her subject all of film history, the author traces out the history of the flashback, illuminating that history through structuralist narrative theory, psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, and theories of ideology. From the American silent film era and the European and Japanese avant-garde of the twenties, from film noir and the psychological melodrama of the forties and fifties to 1980s art and Third World cinema, the flashback has interrogated time and memory, making it a nexus for ideology, representations of the psyche, and shifting cultural attitudes.

Despite differences in the political, social, and economic systems of Taiwan and mainland China, the process of modernization in both has challenged traditional cultural norms. Tonglin Lu examines how differences in cultural formation between Taiwan and China have influenced reactions to modernity and how cultural identity has taken different forms on both sides of the Taiwan straits. She illustrates how these differences in the experience of modernity are expressed through analysis of paradigmatic films produced in both countries, with a particular emphasis on their formal experiments.

This book will explore these issues of auteurship and stardom in the films of Kitano Takeshi especially as they relate to problems of personal and national identity in a Japan confronting an age of globalization. Starting in his early days as one side of a stand-up comedy duo, Kitano has used pairs throughout his films to deftly play out a liminal space between cinema and television, traditional and modern, Japan and the world. Combining a detailed account of the situation in Japanese film and criticism with unique close analyses of Kitano's films from Violent Cop to Takeshis, the author, a renowned expert on Japanese cinema who himself participated in the debates about Kitano in Japan, relates the director to issues of contemporary cinema, Japanese national identity, and globalism.

Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People explores how, over the past four decades, fiction and film have transformed our perceptions and representations of contemporary air travel. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of a wide range of international cultural productions, and elucidates the paradigms and narratives that constitute our current imaginary of air mobility. Erica Durante advances the hypothesis that fiction and film have converted the Airworld-the world of airplanes and airport infrastructures-into a pivotal anthropological place that is endowed with social significance and identity, suggesting that the assimilation of the sky into our cultural imaginary and lifestyle has metamorphosed human society into "Cloud People." In its examination of the representations of air travel as an epicenter of today's world, the book not only illustrates a novel perspective on contemporary fiction, but fills an important gap in the study of globalization within literary and film studies.

The Musicality of Narrative Film is the first book to examine in depth the film/music analogy. Using comparative analysis, Kulezic-Wilson explores film's musical potential, arguing that film's musicality can be achieved through various cinematic devices, with or without music.

There are many books on the technical aspects of film and video editing. Much rarer are books on how editors think and make creative decisions. Filled with timeless principles and thought-provoking examples from a variety of international films, the second edition of Karen Pearlman's Cutting Rhythms offers an in-depth study of the film editor's rhythmic creativity and intuition, the processes and tools editors use to shape rhythms, and how rhythm works to engage audiences in film. While respecting the importance of intuitive flow in the cutting room, this book offers processes for understanding what editing intuition is and how to develop it. This fully revised and updated edition contains: New chapters on collaboration and "editing thinking"; Advice on making onscreen drafts before finalizing your story Tips on how to create and sustain audience empathy and engagement; Explanations of how rhythm is perceived, learned, practiced and applied in editing; Updated discussions of intuition, structure and dynamics; An all-new companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/pearlman) with video examples and links for expanding and illustrating the principles of key chapters in the book.

Until his early retirement at age 50, Hasse Ekman was one of the leading lights of Swedish cinema, an actor, writer, and director of prodigious talents. Yet today his work is virtually unknown outside of Sweden, eclipsed by the filmography of his occasional collaborator (and frequent rival) Ingmar Bergman. This comprehensive introduction-the first ever in English-follows Ekman's career from his early days as a film journalist, through landmark films such as Girl with Hyacinths (1950), to his retirement amid exhaustion and disillusionment. Combining historical context with insightful analyses of Ekman's styles and themes, this long overdue study considerably enriches our understanding of Swedish film history.

This book analyzes Walt Disney's impact on entertainment, new media, and consumer culture in terms of a materialist, psychoanalytic approach to fantasy. The study opens with a taxonomy of narrative fantasy along with a discussion of fantasy as a key concept within psychoanalytic discourse. Zornado reads Disney's full-length animated features of the "golden era" as symbolic responses to cultural and personal catastrophe, and presents Disneyland as a monument to Disney fantasy and one man's singular, perverse desire. What follows after is a discussion of the "second golden age" of Disney and the rise of Pixar Animation as neoliberal nostalgia in crisis. The study ends with a reading of George Lucas as latter-day Disney and Star Wars as Disney fantasy. This study should appeal to film and media studies college undergraduates, graduates students and scholars interested in Disney.

This collection of essays presents new formulations of ideas and practices within documentary media that respond critically to the multifaceted challenges of our age. As social media, augmented reality, and interactive technologies play an increasing role in the documentary landscape, new theorizations are needed to account for how such media both represents recent political, socio-historical, environmental, and representational shifts, and challenges the predominant approaches by promoting new critical sensibilities. The contributions to this volume approach the idea of "critical distance" in a documentary context and in subjects as diverse as documentary exhibitions, night photography, drone imagery, installation art, mobile media, nonhuman creative practices, sound art and interactive technologies. It is essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students working in fields such as documentary studies, film studies, cultural studies, contemporary art history and digital media studies.

From Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Gehring presents a compelling theory of the black comedy film genre. Placing the movies he discusses in a historical and literary context, Gehring explores the genre's obession with death and the characters' failure to be shocked by it. Movies discussed include: Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Heathers, and Natural Born Killers.

The first academic evaluation of the work of this major film director aims to study both his aesthetic achievement and the underlying themes and values he projects. Working within the boundaries of many diverse popular genres, Scott has infused his works with new energy through both a strong formal sense and a cohesive world view. In such films as "Alien," "Blade Runner," "Thelma & Louise," and the recent blockbuster "Gladiator," Scott addresses the tensions between institutions and individuals, passion and reason, and social order and personal freedom--particularly for women, who in Scott's films often posses strong characters, moral rectitude, and physical prowess--making him the rare mainstream director who does not reserve such heroic qualities for men only.

Providing extensive discussion of each of Ridley Scott's films--from 1977's "The Duellists" through the recent blockbuster epic "Gladiator"--author Richard A. Schwartz considers the power that even a filmmaker working well within the boundaries of the Hollywood studio system has to define and promote social values. Scott's frequent choice of the genre film as his mechanism for this makes him a particularly fascinating figure in contemporary cinema.

Hybrid Heritage on Screen provides a long overdue thorough analysis of the 1980s 'Raj Revival'. It examines imperial nostalgia and troubled ethnic, gender and class relations during the Thatcher Era as represented in cinema and television.

The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.

In the wake of the remarkable success of Film Noir Reader, this new collection further explores a genre of limitless fascination -- and one that continues to inspire and galvanise the latest generation of film-makers. Again heavily illustrated, with close to 150 stills, Film Noir Reader 2 is organised much like the earlier volume. It begins with 'More Seminal Essays', including a New York Times attack on crime pictures, written more than half a century ago, before the French had even given the genre its name; a look at its early development by the noted French director Claude Chabrol; and an analysis, by the American critic Stephen Farber, of how film noir reflects the violence and 'Bitch Goddess' values of contemporary society.

Jones uncovers the fascinating inside story of the making of this film, one of the American Film Institutes's 100 Greatest Thrillers. Every aspect is revealed of the film's development and production - casting, design, shooting, scoring, and editing - to the profound disappointment upon its release. This book is the result of over a decade of archival research and interviews with a dozen key people associated with the film, including Grubb, Gregory, actors Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish and cinematographer Stanley Cortez. Their oral histories, along with numerous artifacts and film stills, are here deftly assembled into an account that is as compelling as the movie it celebrates.

Literary style is something many people talk about, but few could define. Yet it is crucial for our response to narrative art. Style can facilitate or obscure the events of a story or the motivations of a character, enhance the aesthetic appeal of a narrative or complicate its emotional impact, and even inflect the political or ethical implications of a work. It is precisely this complex operation of style that Patrick Colm Hogan explains in Style in Narrative. Drawing on recent psychological research, this book proposes a new and clear definition of style and provides a systematic theoretical account of style in relation to cognitive and affective science. Hogan's definition stresses that style varies by both scope, or the range of text or texts that may share a style, and level, the components of an individual work that might involve a shared style. The book uses rich examples from literature, film, and graphic fiction, including analysis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Shakespeare's canon, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and Art Spiegelman's Maus, as well as visual analysis of films by Robert Rodriguez, Deepa Mehta, Eric Rohmer, M.F.Husain, Yasujiro Ozu, and Chuan Lu. Through these studies Hogan identifies stylistic concerns common across mediums as well as the most consequential stylistic differences between them. Bringing together three often separated mediums within a coherent framework, Style in Narrative makes an important contribution to and necessary intervention in the field of stylistics.

A perfect gift for Downton Abbey fans, the official film companion provides a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the art and making of the sequel to the globally successful Downton Abbey film. The worldwide phenomenon and multi-award winning Downton Abbey returns to the big screen with a movie sequel starring the Crawley family and their household staff-and the Downton Abbey 2: The Official Film Companion is the Downton fan's front-row ticket to all the behind-the-scenes action. In addition to the original principal cast-including Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, and Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern as Lord and Lady Grantham-fans will gain an unprecedented look at the new Downton characters, including those played by new cast members Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye, and Dominic West. Featuring spectacular photographs from the production, interviews with the cast and crew, and insight from Downton Abbey writer and creator Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey 2: The Official Film Companion gives fans an in-depth experience of the magic and elegance of Downton Abbey.

A central character in legends and histories of the Old West, Billy the Kid rivals such western icons as Jesse James and General George Armstrong Custer for the number of books and movies his brief, violent life inspired. Billy the Kid: A Reader's Guide introduces readers to the most significant of these written and filmed works. Compiled and written by a respected historian of the Old West and author of a masterful new biography of Billy the Kid, this reader's guide includes summaries and evaluations of biographies, histories, novels, and movies, as well as archival sources and research collections. Surveying newspaper articles, books, pamphlets, essays, and book chapters, Richard W. Etulain traces the shifting views of Billy the Kid from his own era to the present. Etulain's discussion of novels and movies reveals a similar shift, even as it points out both the historical inaccuracies and the literary and cinematic achievements of these works. A brief section on the authentic and supposed photographs of the Kid demonstrates the difficulties specialists and collectors have encountered in locating dependable photographic sources. This discerning overview will guide readers through the plethora of words and images generated by Billy the Kid's life and legend over more than a century. It will prove invaluable to those interested in the demigods of the Old West - and in the ever-changing cultural landscape in which they appear to us.