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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > Film theory & criticism
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American Presidents and Oliver Stone - Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R722
Discovery Miles 7 220
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American Presidents and Oliver Stone - Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema (Paperback, New edition)
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Perhaps no current filmmaker has made more provocative films about
American history than Oliver Stone. In this book, Carl Freedman
gives a detailed and nuanced account of the presidencies of John F.
Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush as fictionalized in
Stone's biographical films JFK, Nixon and W. Offering detailed
historical perspectives alongside careful aesthetic criticism,
Freedman explores how Stone uses melodrama, tragedy and farce to
transform politics into national mythology. Synthesizing film
criticism with political and historical analysis, the book
transcends the limitations of formalism and empiricism, reflecting
on both Stone's achievements as a filmmaker and American politics
of the past sixty years. Oliver Stone's importance among filmmakers
as the major chronicler of recent US history is the starting point
for the analysis of his three 'presidential' films: JFK, Nixon and
W. While not claiming equal artistic merit for Stone's films,
Freedman makes some comparison with Shakespeare's history plays and
draws on T.S. Eliot's notion of 'essential history' to transcend
the barren dichotomy of formalism versus empiricism - that is
treating historical fiction as either only pure fiction, with
nothing to say about real history, or judging it as non-fiction by
the extent to which it adheres to superficial historical detail.
Instead the focus is on the capacity of Stone's films to illuminate
the structural workings of history, contemporary and general.
Freedman is thoroughly familiar with his subject, and his
meticulous attention to historical accuracy and critical attention
to the films is impeccable. This book has a powerfully original
focus and makes a significant contribution to the field through
offering these detailed historical perspectives alongside much more
careful aesthetic criticism of the films. It has the potential to
become not only a great source on its subject, but a model of how
to approach historical fiction in general. This is an academic
study but is written in such an accessible style that it will have
genuine appeal to the general reader - to anyone with an interest
in cinema, politics and recent history. Wide-ranging, accessible
and highly original, American Presidents combines erudition and
complex analysis with jargon-free writing and is sure to engage
anyone interested in the intersection of American politics and
cinema. The academic readership will be among humanities scholars
and students of film, popular culture, media, politics, political
history and modern history. It will be highly relevant to
undergraduate and postgraduate students studying film or modern
American history and culture.
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