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A collection of essays -- early seminal works as well as
freshinterpretations -- on the famous German expressionist
film,Metropolis. Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis has
justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture.
Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation
between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film
text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of
gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in
modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. This
volume provides abroad range of materials and resources for the
study of Lang's film, including both well-known, previously
published critical essays and contributions appearing for the first
time here. The editors provide a two-part introductionthat
furnishes context for what follows: Bachmann's part deals with the
genesis, production, and contemporary reception of the film, while
Minden's defines the problems posed by the text and reviews
thesolutions to these problemsas proposed by later generations of
critics.The first part of the book proper includes selected
contemporaryreviews, commentary by Fritz Lang and others involved
in the making ofthe film, and extracts from Thea von Harbou's
original novel. In the second part, eight modern scholars provide
fresh essays on the genesis, promotion, and reception of the film.
Approximately half of the material in the volume has never before
appeared in print. The volume will appealto students of German,
film, cultural and intellectual history, and social theory. Michael
Minden is University Lecturer in German at Cambridge University and
a fellow of Jesus College. Holger Bachmann received hisPh.D. from
Cambridge on Arthur Schnitzler and film.
Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America examines how cinema
forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and
film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Predating today's transnational media industries by several
decades, these connections were defined by active economic and
cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in
political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the
arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region, from the
first screenings of the Lumiere Cinematographe in 1896 to the
emergence of new forms of cinephilia and cult spectatorship in the
1940s and beyond. Examining these transnational exchanges through
the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and
political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role
played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national,
and global, and between the popular and the elite in
twentieth-century Latin America. In addition, primary historical
documents provide vivid accounts of Latin American film critics,
movie audiences, and film industry workers' experiences with moving
images produced elsewhere, encounters that were deeply rooted in
the local context, yet also opened out onto global horizons.
The Cinema of Italy, a new addition to the 24 Frames series,
looks at the recurring historical, thematic and stylistic features
of twenty-four of the most important Italian sound films. Viewing
Italian cinema at the intersection of history, politics, art and
popular culture, the 24 concise essays of this anthology
contextualize each film within both Italian and Western film
culture. Alongside the crucial lessons of neorealist masterpieces
such as Rossellini's "Paisan" and De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief,"
this collection looks at how Italian cinema has confronted both the
nation's history ( "1860, Senso, The Conformist, Lamerica"), the
so-called "Southern question" ( "Salvatore Giuliano, Padre
Padrone"), as well as modern configurations of labor and gender
relationships through the films of Camerini, De Santis, Olmi,
Pasolini, Antonioni, Wertm?ller, and the Taviani Brothers. The
Cinema of Italy also considers the very personal works of Fellini,
Ferreri and Moretti and gives special attention to those
film-makers (Argento and Leone) whose cinema directly addresses
such international film genres as horror and the western.
The Cinema of Italy, a new addition to the 24 Frames series,
looks at the recurring historical, thematic and stylistic features
of twenty-four of the most important Italian sound films. Viewing
Italian cinema at the intersection of history, politics, art and
popular culture, the 24 concise essays of this anthology
contextualize each film within both Italian and Western film
culture. Alongside the crucial lessons of neorealist masterpieces
such as Rossellini's "Paisan" and De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief,"
this collection looks at how Italian cinema has confronted both the
nation's history ( "1860, Senso, The Conformist, Lamerica"), the
so-called "Southern question" ( "Salvatore Giuliano, Padre
Padrone"), as well as modern configurations of labor and gender
relationships through the films of Camerini, De Santis, Olmi,
Pasolini, Antonioni, Wertm?ller, and the Taviani Brothers. The
Cinema of Italy also considers the very personal works of Fellini,
Ferreri and Moretti and gives special attention to those
film-makers (Argento and Leone) whose cinema directly addresses
such international film genres as horror and the western.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos,
University of California Press's Open Access publishing program.
Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the post-World War I
American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of
civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino
and Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of
authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive
archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio
Bertellini's work shows how their popularity, both political and
erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers,
including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the
democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their
charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage
inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and
political authority. This is the first volume in the new Cinema
Cultures in Contact series, coedited by Giorgio Bertellini, Richard
Abel, and Matthew Solomon. This book is freely available in an open
access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph
Ecosystem)-a collaboration of the Association of American
Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the
Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website,
available at: openmonographs.org.
Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I dialogues with the
variety of texts recently published to commemorate the Great War.
It explores Italian socialist pacifism, the role of women during
the conflict and a dominant cultural movement, Futurism, whose
leader, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, glorified war and enlisted in
the fight. Other soldiers created documents about the war that
differ from the heroic and virile endeavor that Marinetti placed at
the center of his works on war. Italy and the Cultural Politics of
World War I pays attention to the representations of the soldiers
through an analysis of their letters, dominated by descriptions of
the terrible hunger they suffered. In contrast, popular film
absorbed the cultural lessons in Marinetti's writings and
represented soldiers as modernist heroes in comedies and dramas.
However, film did not shy away from representing cowards who could
only be baffoons and fools in propaganda films. In another medium,
the concern was to publish texts that would serve the fighting
soldier and inform readers about ideological and historical
motivations for the conflict. The publishing industry supported
national propaganda efforts. Only socialism could endanger anti-war
publication, but after its initial opposition to the conflict,
socialists occupied a neutral position. Italian socialism still
remained the only European socialist party that did not renege its
pacifism in order to embrace nationalism and the war, but it was
also not in favor of actions that would sabotage in the Italian war
industry. ltalian socialism is only one feature of Italian culture
that was dramatically changed during the war. WWI impacted every
aspect of Italian and of European cultures. For instance, as an
essay in Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I explores,
the war industry needed workers. The solution was to bring Chinese
men France to contribute in the war effort. After the war, they
moved to other countries and in Milan, Italy, they founded one of
the oldest Chinatowns in Europe, dramatically changing the human
landscape of Italy as they later moved to other Italian cities.
Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I supplies essential
research articles to the construction of an inclusive portrayal of
WWI and Italian culture by deepening our understanding of the
transformative role it played in 20th century Italy and Europe.
Today, we are so accustomed to consuming the amplified lives of
film stars that the origins of the phenomenon may seem inevitable
in retrospect. But the conjunction of the terms "movie" and "star"
was inconceivable prior to the 1910s. "Flickers of Desire" explores
the emergence of this mass cultural phenomenon, asking how and why
a cinema that did not even run screen credits developed so quickly
into a venue in which performers became the American film
industry's most lucrative mode of product individuation.
Contributors chart the rise of American cinema's first galaxy of
stars through a variety of archival sources--newspaper columns,
popular journals, fan magazines, cartoons, dolls, postcards,
scrapbooks, personal letters, limericks, and dances. The iconic
status of Charlie Chaplin's little tramp, Mary Pickford's golden
curls, Pearl White's daring stunts, or Sessue Hayakawa's
expressionless mask reflect the wild diversity of a public's
desired ideals, while Theda Bara's seductive turn as the embodiment
of feminine evil, George Beban's performance as a sympathetic
Italian immigrant, or G. M. Anderson's creation of the heroic
cowboy/outlaw character transformed the fantasies that shaped
American filmmaking and its vital role in society.
Giorgio Bertellini traces the origins of American cinema's
century-long fascination with Italy and Italian immigrants to the
popularity of the pre-photographic aesthetic the picturesque. Once
associated with landscape painting in northern Europe, the
picturesque came to symbolize Mediterranean Europe through
comforting views of distant landscapes and exotic characters.
Taking its cue from a picturesque stage backdrop from The Godfather
Part II, Italy in Early American Cinema shows how this aesthetic
was transferred from 19th-century American painters to early
20th-century American filmmakers. Italy in Early American Cinema
offers readings of early films that pay close attention to how
landscape representations that were related to narrative settings
and filmmaking locations conveyed distinct ideas about racial
difference and national destiny."
Sinister, swaggering, yet often sympathetic, the figure of the
gangster has stolen and murdered its way into the hearts of
American cinema audiences. Despite the enduring popularity of the
gangster film, however, traditional criticism has focused almost
entirely on a few canonical movies such as Little Caesar, Public
Enemy, and The Godfather trilogy, resulting in a limited and
distorted understanding of this diverse and changing genre. Mob
Culture offers a long-awaited, fresh look at the American gangster
film, exposing its hidden histories from the Black Hand gangs of
the early twentieth century to The Sopranos. Departing from
traditional approaches that have typically focused on the "nature"
of the gangster, the editors have collected essays that engage the
larger question of how the meaning of criminality has changed over
time. Grouped into three thematic sections, the essays examine
gangster films through the lens of social, gender, and
racial/ethnic issues. Destined to become a classroom favorite, Mob
Culture is an indispensable reference for future work in the genre.
Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a
thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been
long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of
postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration
from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the
discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any
understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This
collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected
scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which
colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the
post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento,
Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial
Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial
in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the
Italian nation. These contributors offer compelling essays on
decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics,
anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular
literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature.
Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not
only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other
countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will
welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial
culture.
Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and
influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career,
Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to
produce subversive, playful, often satiric works. On the way he won
acclaim and widespread popularity while showing a genius for
adjusting his poetic pitch--shifting from romantic realist to
controversial satirist to sentimental jester.
Leading scholar-critic Giorgio Bertellini divides Kusturica's
career into three stages--dissention, disconnection, and
dissonance--to reflect both the historic and cultural changes going
on around him and the changes his cinema has undergone. He uses
Kusturica's Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995)--the famously
inflammatory take on Yugoslav history after World War II--as the
pivot between the tone of romantic, yet pungent critique of the
director's early works and later journeys into Balkanist farce
marked by slapstick and a self-conscious primitivism.
Eschewing the one-sided polemics Kusturica's work often provokes,
Bertellini employs balanced discussion and critical analysis to
offer a fascinating and up-to-date consideration of a major figure
in world cinema.
Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America examines how cinema
forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and
film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Predating today's transnational media industries by several
decades, these connections were defined by active economic and
cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in
political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the
arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region, from the
first screenings of the Lumiere Cinematographe in 1896 to the
emergence of new forms of cinephilia and cult spectatorship in the
1940s and beyond. Examining these transnational exchanges through
the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and
political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role
played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national,
and global, and between the popular and the elite in
twentieth-century Latin America. In addition, primary historical
documents provide vivid accounts of Latin American film critics,
movie audiences, and film industry workers' experiences with moving
images produced elsewhere, encounters that were deeply rooted in
the local context, yet also opened out onto global horizons.
Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and
influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career,
Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to
produce subversive, playful, often satiric works. On the way he won
acclaim and widespread popularity while showing a genius for
adjusting his poetic pitch--shifting from romantic realist to
controversial satirist to sentimental jester.
Leading scholar-critic Giorgio Bertellini divides Kusturica's
career into three stages--dissention, disconnection, and
dissonance--to reflect both the historic and cultural changes going
on around him and the changes his cinema has undergone. He uses
Kusturica's Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995)--the famously
inflammatory take on Yugoslav history after World War II--as the
pivot between the tone of romantic, yet pungent critique of the
director's early works and later journeys into Balkanist farce
marked by slapstick and a self-conscious primitivism.
Eschewing the one-sided polemics Kusturica's work often provokes,
Bertellini employs balanced discussion and critical analysis to
offer a fascinating and up-to-date consideration of a major figure
in world cinema.
Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I dialogues with the
variety of texts recently published to commemorate the Great War.
It explores Italian socialist pacifism, the role of women during
the conflict and a dominant cultural movement, Futurism, whose
leader, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, glorified war and enlisted in
the fight. Other soldiers created documents about the war that
differ from the heroic and virile endeavor that Marinetti placed at
the center of his works on war. Italy and the Cultural Politics of
World War I pays attention to the representations of the soldiers
through an analysis of their letters, dominated by descriptions of
the terrible hunger they suffered. In contrast, popular film
absorbed the cultural lessons in Marinetti's writings and
represented soldiers as modernist heroes in comedies and dramas.
However, film did not shy away from representing cowards who could
only be baffoons and fools in propaganda films. In another medium,
the concern was to publish texts that would serve the fighting
soldier and inform readers about ideological and historical
motivations for the conflict. The publishing industry supported
national propaganda efforts. Only socialism could endanger anti-war
publication, but after its initial opposition to the conflict,
socialists occupied a neutral position. Italian socialism still
remained the only European socialist party that did not renege its
pacifism in order to embrace nationalism and the war, but it was
also not in favor of actions that would sabotage in the Italian war
industry. ltalian socialism is only one feature of Italian culture
that was dramatically changed during the war. WWI impacted every
aspect of Italian and of European cultures. For instance, as an
essay in Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I explores,
the war industry needed workers. The solution was to bring Chinese
men France to contribute in the war effort. After the war, they
moved to other countries and in Milan, Italy, they founded one of
the oldest Chinatowns in Europe, dramatically changing the human
landscape of Italy as they later moved to other Italian cities.
Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I supplies essential
research articles to the construction of an inclusive portrayal of
WWI and Italian culture by deepening our understanding of the
transformative role it played in 20th century Italy and Europe.
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