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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Drama texts, plays > From 1900
"The Lost Weekend" swept the 1945 Academy Awards, with nominations
for Best Film Editing, Score, and Black and White Cinematography,
and Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Screenplay. It
also received numerous awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the
Golden Globes. Based on the novel by Charles Jackson, a work that
many in Hollywood had thought unfilmmable because of its relentless
grimness, "The Lost Weekend" was one of the first films to explore
the devastating effects of alcoholism. Ray Milland was cast against
type as Don Birnam, a writer plagued by depression and self-doubt
who, as his alcoholism progresses, slips into a horrifying downward
spiral of lying, begging, stealing, and madness. Milland's riveting
performance won him an Oscar. Jane Wyman also delivers a powerful
performance as his faithful girlfriend, Helen St. James, whose
selfless love offers Birnam a hope of redemption.
This facsimile edition of "The Lost Weekend" not only reveals the
genius of the film but also illuminates how the script stands alone
as a rare, wonderful piece of writing. Jeffrey Meyers's
introduction looks at the transformation from novel to film and
examines Wilder and coauthor Charles Brackett's methods as
collaborators. Readers will gain important insights into the craft
of screenwriting, and the personality and methods of one of
Hollywood's greatest directors.
The first stage adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's famous crime
novelTom Ripley is a criminal with an ambiguous past. He is sent to
Italy by a wealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's
son. In the process Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced,
finding the murder the only way to deal with the situation. From
that point Ripley tries to cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's
beguiling tale of morality and amorality is given a dramatic
rendering by contemporary dramatist Phyllis Nagy, who knew
Highsmith in her later years in Paris."Each play I see by Phyllis
Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to
have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)
Although children have proliferated in Spain's cinema since its
inception, nowhere are they privileged and complicated in quite the
same way as in the films of the 1970s and early 1980s, a period of
radical political and cultural change for the nation as it emerged
from almost four decades of repressive dictatorship under the rule
of General Francisco Franco. In Inhabiting the In-Between:
Childhood and Cinema in Spain's Long Transition, Sarah Thomas
analyses the cinematic child within this complex historical
conjuncture of a nation looking back on decades of authoritarian
rule and forward to an uncertain future. Examining films from
several genres by four key directors of the Transition - Carlos
Saura, Antonio Mercero, Victor Erice, and Jaime de Arminan - Thomas
explores how the child is represented as both subject and object,
and self and other, and consistently cast in a position between
categories or binary poles. She demonstrates how the cinematic
child that materializes in this period is a fundamentally shifting,
oscillating, ambivalent figure that points toward the impossibility
of fully comprehending the historical past and the figure of the
other, while inviting an ethical engagement with each.
A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's
six major novels Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the
English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic
novels. Mansfield Park: On a quest to find a position in society,
Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Northanger
Abbey: Young, naive Catherine Morland receives an invitation to
stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey. Sense and
Sensibility: Forced to leave their family home after their father's
death, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood try to forge a new life at
Barton Cottage. Pride and Prejudice: Mrs Bennet is determined to
get her five daughters married well, so when the wealthy Mr Bingley
and his friend Mr Darcy move into the neighbourhood her hopes are
raised... Emma: Emma Woodhouse declares she will never marry, but
she is determined to find a match for her friend Harriet.
Persuasion: Eight years ago, Anne Elliot rejected a marriage
proposal from a handsome but poor naval officer. Now her former
love has returned... With an all-star cast including David Tennant,
Benedict Cumberbatch, Julia McKenzie, Jenny Agutter, Toby Jones,
Eve Best and Juliet Stevenson, these BBC radio adaptations are full
of humour, romance, love lost and love regained.
Breathless, a low-budget film, came to be regarded as one of the
major accomplishments of the French New Wave cinema of the early
sixties. It had a tremendous influence on French filmmakers and on
world cinema in general. Beyond its significance in film history,
it was also a film of considerable cultural impact. In Breathless,
Jean-Luc Godard captured the spirit of a disillusioned generation
and fashioned a style, which drew on the past, to parade that
disillusionment. In his introduction, Dudley Andrew brilliantly
explains what Godard set out to accomplish in Breathless. He
illuminates the intertextual and cultural references of the film
and the tensions withiin it between tradition and innovation. This
volume also features, for the first time in English, the complete
and accurate continuity script of Breathless, together with
Francois Truffaut's surprisingly detailed original treatment. Also
included are an in-depth selection of reviews and criticism in
French and English; a brief biographical sketch of the director's
life that covers the development of his career, as well as a
filmography and selected bibliography. Dudley Andrew is a professor
of film studies and comparative literature at Yale University. He
is the author of Concepts in Film Theory, Andre Bazin, Flim in the
Aura of Art, and other books on film.
A nine-and-a-half-hour documentary on the Nazi extermination camps,
"Shoah" (the Hebrew word for "Holocaust") was internationally
hailed as a masterpiece upon its release in 1985. Shunning any
re-creation, archival footage, or visual documentation of the
events, filmmaker Claude Lanzmann relied on the words of
witnesses--Jewish, Polish, and German--to describe in ruthless
detail the bureaucratic machinery of the Final Solution, so that
the remote experiences of the Holocaust became fresh and immediate.
This book presents in an accessible and vivid format the testimony
of survivors, participants, witnesses, and scholars. This tenth
anniversary edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the
liberation of the camps, is newly revised and corrected in order to
more accurately present the actual testimony of those interviewed.
"Shoah" is an unparalleled oral history of the Holocaust, an
intensely readable journey through the twentieth century's greatest
horror.
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Sunset Boulevard
(Paperback)
Billy Wilder; Introduction by Jeffrey Meyers
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R639
R589
Discovery Miles 5 890
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"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) is one of the most famous films in the
history of Hollywood, and perhaps no film better represents
Hollywood's vision of itself. Billy Wilder collaborated on the
screenplay with the very able Charles Brackett, and with D. M.
Marshman Jr., who later joined the team. Together they created a
film both allusive and literate, with Hollywood's worst excesses
and neuroses laid out for all to see. After viewing "Sunset
Boulevard" Louis B. Mayer exclaimed: "We should throw this Wilder
out of town " The "New York Times," however, gave the movie a rave
review, praising "that rare blend of pungent writing, expert
acting, masterly direction, and unobtrusively artistic
photography." The film was nominated for Best Picture, and Wilder
won an Academy Award for Best Story and Best Screenplay.
This facsimile edition of "Sunset Boulevard" makes it possible to
get as much pleasure from reading the highly intelligent screenplay
as from seeing the film. Jeffrey Meyers's introduction provides an
intriguing array of background details about Wilder, the film's
casting and production, and the lives of those connected to what
has become a classic.
In state and public discussion about war and conflict, figures of
transgression such as deserters, pacifist and emigrants are often
marginalised, but they also play a key role in rethinking cultural
and national identity in the wake of military violence. Raising
questions of agency, responsibility and culpability in relation to
the 'other', their cultural representation can enable reflection on
and renegotiation of values and collective norms after the
destabilisation of war. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this
collection analyses the depiction of these transgressive figures in
a variety of visual media, as well as the narrative,
socio-cultural, political and historical contexts in which they
emerge.
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