Newly available in paperback, this study provides a scholarly yet accessible account of the work of Marcel Carne, one of the great directors of classical French cinema and the key figure behind the poetic realist film movement of the 1930s. His films, a number of which were made in collaboration with the poet-turned-scriptwriter Jacques Prevert, include such well-known works as Le quai des brumes, Le jour se leve and Les enfants du paradis. As the first book to be written on Carne for a number of years, it offers a fresh perspective on his cinema, particularly through a re-examination of his post-war work - although many of these films were very popular and offer a fascinating insight into France at the time, they have, until now, largely been neglected. Adopting a carefully crafted aesthetic, his films explore a tension between pessimism and entrapment on the one hand, and transcendence, idealised romantic love and a populist celebration of working-class life on the other. His career traversed key moments in French cinema, including poetic realism, the tradition of quality and the French New Wave, and spanned important historical moments such as the Popular Front of the 1930s, the Second World War and France's post-war modernisation. This book will be of interest to scholars, students and film-lovers alike. -- .

Many years before Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve rose to fame, the French cinema produced a host of glamorous female stars designed to rival their Hollywood counterparts. Bathed in soft light, discussed adoringly in fan magazines and shown wearing the latest fashions, these 'cinematic stars' emerged in opposition to France's traditional stage-based stardom, while remaining, through the roles they played and the looks they sported, a distinctly French phenomenon. The French Screen Goddess examines how these stars influenced the narratives and look of their films, contributed to defining the period's new, emancipated femininity -, the 'modern woman' -, and related to the decade's politics, particularly the Popular Front of the mid-1930s. The book focuses on the three most important examples of this type of stardom, Annabella, Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan, while also considering many other key stars, such as Arletty, Viviane Romance and Jean Gabin. Previously neglected films are considered and true classics of French cinema re-examined, with Rene Clair's Quatorze juillet, Julien Duvivier's La Bandera, and Marcel Carne's Le Quai des brumes and Hotel du Nord foremost among these.

Throughout Southeast Asia, film stars hold an important place in popular culture. They feature prominently in magazines and newspapers, on billboards and cinema marquees, at public events and premieres, and on the internet and social media. Southeast Asian cinemas have built their own distinctive star systems, which have produced a host of successful icons. These stars often possess the features of stardom commonly noted in film scholarship, such as glamour and charisma, while simultaneously offering nationally and regionally specific inflections of the phenomenon, embodying local tastes, values and ideologies. Stars such as Ananda Everingham in Thailand, P. Ramlee in Malaysia, and Nora Aunor in the Philippines, have all reached significant levels of fame in their respective countries. And yet, there is little academic work focusing on Southeast Asia's stars. Film Stardom in Southeast Asia addresses this neglect by examining how stars shape the marketing, business and economics of their industries, contribute to the meanings and popularity of their films, and give insight into the social and political contexts of life in Southeast Asia.

After the end of World War II when many Southeast Asian nations gained national independence, and up until the Asian Financial Crisis, film industries here had distinctive and colourful histories shaped by unique national and domestic conditions. Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998) addresses the similar themes, histories, trends, technologies and sociopolitical events that have moulded the art and industry of film in this region, identifying the unique characteristics that continue to shape cinema, spectatorship and Southeast Asian filmmaking in the present and the future. Bringing together scholars across the region, chapters explore the conditions that have given rise to today's burgeoning Southeast Asian cinemas as well as the gaps that manifest as temporal belatedness and historical disjunctures in the more established regional industries.

This book provides a scholarly yet accessible account of the work of Marcel Carne, one of the great directors of classical French cinema and the key figure behind the poetic realist film movement of the 1930s. His films, a number of which were made in collaboration with the poet-turned-scriptwriter Jacques Prevert, include such well-known works as Le Quai des brumes, Le Jour se leve and Les Enfants du paradis. As the first book to be written on Carne for a number of years, it offers a fresh perspective on his cinema, particularly through a re-examination of his post-war work - although many of these films were very popular and offer a fascinating insight into France at the time, they have, until now, largely been neglected. Adopting a carefully crafted aesthetic, his films explore a tension between pessimism and entrapment on the one hand, and transcendence, idealised romantic love and a populist celebration of working-class life on the other. His career traversed key moments in French cinema, including poetic realism, the tradition of quality and the French New Wave, and spanned important historical moments such as the Popular Front of the 1930s, the Second World War and France's post-war modernisation. This book will be of interest to scholars, students and film-lovers alike. -- .