Glyn Davis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637782
- eISBN:
- 9780748670864
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637782.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Nominated for four Oscars, Far from Heaven earned rave reviews and won widespread cultural and critical recognition. A knowing and emotionally involving homage to the films of Douglas Sirk, this film ...
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Nominated for four Oscars, Far from Heaven earned rave reviews and won widespread cultural and critical recognition. A knowing and emotionally involving homage to the films of Douglas Sirk, this film is a key text in the canon of American independent cinema. This book offers a detailed and perceptive study of Haynes' film, with each chapter centred on a topic crucial for understanding Far from Heaven's richness and seductive pleasures (authorship, melodrama, queerness). The film is also positioned in relation to the rest of Todd Haynes' work, the New Queer Cinema movement, and the history of US independent cinema.Less
Nominated for four Oscars, Far from Heaven earned rave reviews and won widespread cultural and critical recognition. A knowing and emotionally involving homage to the films of Douglas Sirk, this film is a key text in the canon of American independent cinema. This book offers a detailed and perceptive study of Haynes' film, with each chapter centred on a topic crucial for understanding Far from Heaven's richness and seductive pleasures (authorship, melodrama, queerness). The film is also positioned in relation to the rest of Todd Haynes' work, the New Queer Cinema movement, and the history of US independent cinema.
Elena del Rio
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635252
- eISBN:
- 9780748651146
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635252.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book offers a unique reconsideration of the performing body that privileges the notion of affective force over that of visual form at the centre of former theories of spectacle and ...
More
This book offers a unique reconsideration of the performing body that privileges the notion of affective force over that of visual form at the centre of former theories of spectacle and performativity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of the body, and on Deleuze-Spinoza's relevant concepts of affect and expression, the author examines a kind of cinema that she calls ‘affective-performative’. The features of this cinema unfold via detailed and engaging discussions of the movements, gestures and speeds of the body in a variety of films by Douglas Sirk, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Sally Potter, Claire Denis and David Lynch. Key to the book's engagement with performance is a consistent attention to the body's powers of affection. Grounding her analysis in these powers, the author shows the insufficiency of former theoretical approaches in accounting for the transformative and creative capacities of the moving body of performance. This book will be of interest to any scholars and students of film concerned with bodily aspects of cinema, whether from a Deleuzian, phenomenological or feminist perspective.Less
This book offers a unique reconsideration of the performing body that privileges the notion of affective force over that of visual form at the centre of former theories of spectacle and performativity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of the body, and on Deleuze-Spinoza's relevant concepts of affect and expression, the author examines a kind of cinema that she calls ‘affective-performative’. The features of this cinema unfold via detailed and engaging discussions of the movements, gestures and speeds of the body in a variety of films by Douglas Sirk, Rainer W. Fassbinder, Sally Potter, Claire Denis and David Lynch. Key to the book's engagement with performance is a consistent attention to the body's powers of affection. Grounding her analysis in these powers, the author shows the insufficiency of former theoretical approaches in accounting for the transformative and creative capacities of the moving body of performance. This book will be of interest to any scholars and students of film concerned with bodily aspects of cinema, whether from a Deleuzian, phenomenological or feminist perspective.
Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619061
- eISBN:
- 9780748670888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619061.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the advent of the new age of television and a refining of the cinematic experience in the 1950s. As television began to take off outside the studios' control, audiences for ...
More
This chapter discusses the advent of the new age of television and a refining of the cinematic experience in the 1950s. As television began to take off outside the studios' control, audiences for theatre-based entertainment declined. Hollywood made both bold and sometimes outlandish attempts to bring them back. By the end of the 1950s, widescreen entertainment had become entrenched as a Hollywood staple and film producers and exhibitors were even competing for the best way to pipe smells around an auditorium. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Tastemaking: Reviews, Popular Canons, and Soap Operas’ by Barbara Klinger, which focuses on Douglas Sirk and the different meanings that his films can take on for audiences depending when and how they were encountered.Less
This chapter discusses the advent of the new age of television and a refining of the cinematic experience in the 1950s. As television began to take off outside the studios' control, audiences for theatre-based entertainment declined. Hollywood made both bold and sometimes outlandish attempts to bring them back. By the end of the 1950s, widescreen entertainment had become entrenched as a Hollywood staple and film producers and exhibitors were even competing for the best way to pipe smells around an auditorium. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Tastemaking: Reviews, Popular Canons, and Soap Operas’ by Barbara Klinger, which focuses on Douglas Sirk and the different meanings that his films can take on for audiences depending when and how they were encountered.
Elena del Río
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635252
- eISBN:
- 9780748651146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635252.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter challenges the notion of the female body as a visual, static fetish by focusing on the body's expressive capacities and their effect upon oppressive structures. It provides a critical ...
More
This chapter challenges the notion of the female body as a visual, static fetish by focusing on the body's expressive capacities and their effect upon oppressive structures. It provides a critical analysis of Douglas Sirk's films Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels, and argues that the subversive force of the female performer in these Sirkian melodramas does not primarily rest upon notions of individual agency. Rather, the most notable subversive effects of these films lie in the capacity of certain heightened affective-performative moments to disorganise the constrictive ideological lines enforced by their narratives. The chapter also discusses Gilles Deleuze's ideas about expression-event.Less
This chapter challenges the notion of the female body as a visual, static fetish by focusing on the body's expressive capacities and their effect upon oppressive structures. It provides a critical analysis of Douglas Sirk's films Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels, and argues that the subversive force of the female performer in these Sirkian melodramas does not primarily rest upon notions of individual agency. Rather, the most notable subversive effects of these films lie in the capacity of certain heightened affective-performative moments to disorganise the constrictive ideological lines enforced by their narratives. The chapter also discusses Gilles Deleuze's ideas about expression-event.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 1 ("Thinking with the Heart: Sirk and Pictorial Reception) analyses some of the still moments that have been built into many of this director's most arresting cinematic tableaux in relation ...
More
Chapter 1 ("Thinking with the Heart: Sirk and Pictorial Reception) analyses some of the still moments that have been built into many of this director's most arresting cinematic tableaux in relation to three different models of pictorial reception (two contributed by Michael Fried, one by the Viennese art historian Alois Riegl). Evans's discussion of Fried's divergent notions of "absorption" and "theatricality" (the two ways in which a contemporary painting may address its beholder, according to the American critic) and Riegl's more complex conception of the possibility of attaininga state of "sympathetic attention" isused to elucidate a crucial scene in Sirk's 1953 film All I Desire, before being correlated with current research on the film spectator's "affective" response to melodrama to some degree.Less
Chapter 1 ("Thinking with the Heart: Sirk and Pictorial Reception) analyses some of the still moments that have been built into many of this director's most arresting cinematic tableaux in relation to three different models of pictorial reception (two contributed by Michael Fried, one by the Viennese art historian Alois Riegl). Evans's discussion of Fried's divergent notions of "absorption" and "theatricality" (the two ways in which a contemporary painting may address its beholder, according to the American critic) and Riegl's more complex conception of the possibility of attaininga state of "sympathetic attention" isused to elucidate a crucial scene in Sirk's 1953 film All I Desire, before being correlated with current research on the film spectator's "affective" response to melodrama to some degree.
Glyn Davis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637782
- eISBN:
- 9780748670864
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637782.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the notion of authorship. Far from Heaven was marketed and advertised to audiences as ‘a Todd Haynes film’, and part of this chapter is devoted to identifying the ways in which ...
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This chapter discusses the notion of authorship. Far from Heaven was marketed and advertised to audiences as ‘a Todd Haynes film’, and part of this chapter is devoted to identifying the ways in which the movie repeats or echoes thematic concerns and stylistic devices used by Haynes in his earlier films. Throughout his career, Haynes has utilised his films to question and challenge the limitations of specific identity categories and social roles: the bluntness of labels, the oppressive nature of certain culturally constructed positions, and the role of the media in fixing an identity. Psycho and Far from Heaven serve as rare instances of queer, experimental directors being given Hollywood funding. For all of its simulation of Douglas Sirk's style, and its borrowings from a broad range of other films, Far from Heaven contains unique and distinctive elements.Less
This chapter discusses the notion of authorship. Far from Heaven was marketed and advertised to audiences as ‘a Todd Haynes film’, and part of this chapter is devoted to identifying the ways in which the movie repeats or echoes thematic concerns and stylistic devices used by Haynes in his earlier films. Throughout his career, Haynes has utilised his films to question and challenge the limitations of specific identity categories and social roles: the bluntness of labels, the oppressive nature of certain culturally constructed positions, and the role of the media in fixing an identity. Psycho and Far from Heaven serve as rare instances of queer, experimental directors being given Hollywood funding. For all of its simulation of Douglas Sirk's style, and its borrowings from a broad range of other films, Far from Heaven contains unique and distinctive elements.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 2 investigates the influence of Modernist art and art theory on this highly sophisticated film artist's formal approach, which includes a rereading of Magnificent Obsession that has been ...
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Chapter 2 investigates the influence of Modernist art and art theory on this highly sophisticated film artist's formal approach, which includes a rereading of Magnificent Obsession that has been deeply informed by the writings of the pioneering German Expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky. Some mid-century American responses to Modernist art published in the popular press are also scrutinised before looking at Sirk's depiction of the other characters' reactions to the self-described "Surrealist" artist that appears in his 1951 small town musical comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? Finally, two texts that have previously addressed the relationship between film and painting, Brigitte Peucker's Incorporating Images: Film and the Rival Arts and Angela Dalle Vacche's Cinema and Painting: How Art is Used in Film, are considered in passing.Less
Chapter 2 investigates the influence of Modernist art and art theory on this highly sophisticated film artist's formal approach, which includes a rereading of Magnificent Obsession that has been deeply informed by the writings of the pioneering German Expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky. Some mid-century American responses to Modernist art published in the popular press are also scrutinised before looking at Sirk's depiction of the other characters' reactions to the self-described "Surrealist" artist that appears in his 1951 small town musical comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? Finally, two texts that have previously addressed the relationship between film and painting, Brigitte Peucker's Incorporating Images: Film and the Rival Arts and Angela Dalle Vacche's Cinema and Painting: How Art is Used in Film, are considered in passing.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The first truly interdisciplinary analysis to link Douglas Sirk’s striking visual aesthetic to key movements in twentieth century art and architecture, this book reveals how the exaggerated artifice ...
More
The first truly interdisciplinary analysis to link Douglas Sirk’s striking visual aesthetic to key movements in twentieth century art and architecture, this book reveals how the exaggerated artifice of Sirk's formal style emerged from his detailed understanding of the artistic debates that raged in 1920s Europe and the post-war United States.
By providing an extensive analysis of nine of this director's most pivotal works, including lengthy case studies of Final Chord (1936), Magnificent Obsession (1953), All That Heaven Allows (1954), The Tarnished Angels (1957) and Imitation of Life (1959), Victoria L. Evans demonstrates how Sirk attempted to dissolve the boundaries of the cinema by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into the colour, composition and settings of many of his most well-known films. Treating Sirk’s oeuvre as a continuum between his German and American periods, Evans argues that this influential director's non-naturalistic mise-en-scène was the result of an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue, and she illuminates the broader cultural context in which his films appeared by establishing connections with archival documents, Modernist manifestos and the philosophical writings of his peers.Less
The first truly interdisciplinary analysis to link Douglas Sirk’s striking visual aesthetic to key movements in twentieth century art and architecture, this book reveals how the exaggerated artifice of Sirk's formal style emerged from his detailed understanding of the artistic debates that raged in 1920s Europe and the post-war United States.
By providing an extensive analysis of nine of this director's most pivotal works, including lengthy case studies of Final Chord (1936), Magnificent Obsession (1953), All That Heaven Allows (1954), The Tarnished Angels (1957) and Imitation of Life (1959), Victoria L. Evans demonstrates how Sirk attempted to dissolve the boundaries of the cinema by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into the colour, composition and settings of many of his most well-known films. Treating Sirk’s oeuvre as a continuum between his German and American periods, Evans argues that this influential director's non-naturalistic mise-en-scène was the result of an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue, and she illuminates the broader cultural context in which his films appeared by establishing connections with archival documents, Modernist manifestos and the philosophical writings of his peers.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 3 ("The Invasion of Machines and Machine Culture") builds upon Ben Singer's observation in Melodrama and Modernity that this genre reflects the spectator's growing fear of the machines that ...
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Chapter 3 ("The Invasion of Machines and Machine Culture") builds upon Ben Singer's observation in Melodrama and Modernity that this genre reflects the spectator's growing fear of the machines that have begun to physically invade our space. It further expands upon this insight by moving beyond the widespread feelings of psychic unease Singer identifies to address some of the more specific pathologies that arose from theincreased mechanisation of war during the early twentieth-century. This chapter culminates in an explication of The Tarnished Angels that has been grounded in Ernst Jünger' spaens to the hard-bodied men who were forged in the furnace of battle (a particularly apt means of explaining Roger Schumann's personality), widely circulated writings that the German born director would no doubt have known.Less
Chapter 3 ("The Invasion of Machines and Machine Culture") builds upon Ben Singer's observation in Melodrama and Modernity that this genre reflects the spectator's growing fear of the machines that have begun to physically invade our space. It further expands upon this insight by moving beyond the widespread feelings of psychic unease Singer identifies to address some of the more specific pathologies that arose from theincreased mechanisation of war during the early twentieth-century. This chapter culminates in an explication of The Tarnished Angels that has been grounded in Ernst Jünger' spaens to the hard-bodied men who were forged in the furnace of battle (a particularly apt means of explaining Roger Schumann's personality), widely circulated writings that the German born director would no doubt have known.
Tom Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496817983
- eISBN:
- 9781496822406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496817983.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his ...
More
Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his reputation as one of the 20th century cinema’s great ironists. He did things his own way: for him, rules were there to be broken, whether they were the decrees of Nazi authorities trying to turn film into propaganda or of studios insisting that characters’ problems should always be solved and that endings should always restore order, providing what Sirk used to call “emergency exits” for audiences.
This study of Sirk is the first comprehensive critical overview of the filmmaker’s entire career, examining the ’50s melodramas for which he has been rightly acclaimed – films such as All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels and Imitation of Life – and instructively looking beyond them at his earlier work, which includes musicals, comedies, thrillers, war movies and westerns.
Offering fresh insights into all of these films and situating them in the culture of their times, the book also incorporates extensive interview material drawn from a variety of sources, including the author’s own conversations with the director. Furthermore, it undertakes a detailed reconsideration of the generally overlooked novels and plays that served as sources for Sirk’s films, as well as providing a critical overview of previous Sirk commentary, from the time of the director’s “rediscovery” in the late 1960s to the present day.Less
Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his reputation as one of the 20th century cinema’s great ironists. He did things his own way: for him, rules were there to be broken, whether they were the decrees of Nazi authorities trying to turn film into propaganda or of studios insisting that characters’ problems should always be solved and that endings should always restore order, providing what Sirk used to call “emergency exits” for audiences.
This study of Sirk is the first comprehensive critical overview of the filmmaker’s entire career, examining the ’50s melodramas for which he has been rightly acclaimed – films such as All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels and Imitation of Life – and instructively looking beyond them at his earlier work, which includes musicals, comedies, thrillers, war movies and westerns.
Offering fresh insights into all of these films and situating them in the culture of their times, the book also incorporates extensive interview material drawn from a variety of sources, including the author’s own conversations with the director. Furthermore, it undertakes a detailed reconsideration of the generally overlooked novels and plays that served as sources for Sirk’s films, as well as providing a critical overview of previous Sirk commentary, from the time of the director’s “rediscovery” in the late 1960s to the present day.
Harper Cossar
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813126517
- eISBN:
- 9780813135618
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813126517.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
When widescreen technology was introduced to filmmaking in 1953, it changed the visual framework and aesthetic qualities of cinema forever. Before widescreen, a director's vision for capturing ...
More
When widescreen technology was introduced to filmmaking in 1953, it changed the visual framework and aesthetic qualities of cinema forever. Before widescreen, a director's vision for capturing beautiful landscapes or city skylines was limited by what could be included in the boxy confines of an Academy Ratio film frame. The introduction and subsequent evolution of widescreen technology has allowed directors to push the boundaries of filmmaking. This book explores the technological changes of the widescreen technique and how the format has inspired directors and also sparked debates among film critics. Examining early filmmakers such as Buster Keaton and D. W. Griffith and genre pioneers like Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk, the book explains how directors use wider aspect ratios to enhance their creative visions. The book tracks the history of stylistic experimentation with the film frame and demonstrates how the expansion of the screen has uncovered myriad creative possibilities for directors.Less
When widescreen technology was introduced to filmmaking in 1953, it changed the visual framework and aesthetic qualities of cinema forever. Before widescreen, a director's vision for capturing beautiful landscapes or city skylines was limited by what could be included in the boxy confines of an Academy Ratio film frame. The introduction and subsequent evolution of widescreen technology has allowed directors to push the boundaries of filmmaking. This book explores the technological changes of the widescreen technique and how the format has inspired directors and also sparked debates among film critics. Examining early filmmakers such as Buster Keaton and D. W. Griffith and genre pioneers like Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk, the book explains how directors use wider aspect ratios to enhance their creative visions. The book tracks the history of stylistic experimentation with the film frame and demonstrates how the expansion of the screen has uncovered myriad creative possibilities for directors.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
After describing one of Peter Greenaway's recent efforts to move beyond the limits of the cinema, Evans proposes that Douglas Sirk had already begun to dissolve the boundaries the medium by ...
More
After describing one of Peter Greenaway's recent efforts to move beyond the limits of the cinema, Evans proposes that Douglas Sirk had already begun to dissolve the boundaries the medium by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into his mise-en-scène. She goes on to assert that Sirk's importation of a high art aesthetic into the low genre of melodrama echoed the widespread European Modernist preoccupation with the creation of a synergistic Gesamtkunstwerk or "total art work" during the period in which he intellectually came of age. Finally, the director's tendency to create "pictures" of the external landscape that the characters (and the viewer) are obliged to contemplate through the window frame is interpreted in the light of the theories of Le Corbusier.Less
After describing one of Peter Greenaway's recent efforts to move beyond the limits of the cinema, Evans proposes that Douglas Sirk had already begun to dissolve the boundaries the medium by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into his mise-en-scène. She goes on to assert that Sirk's importation of a high art aesthetic into the low genre of melodrama echoed the widespread European Modernist preoccupation with the creation of a synergistic Gesamtkunstwerk or "total art work" during the period in which he intellectually came of age. Finally, the director's tendency to create "pictures" of the external landscape that the characters (and the viewer) are obliged to contemplate through the window frame is interpreted in the light of the theories of Le Corbusier.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
After some discussion of the impact of the automobile on the shape of the twentieth-century American city, Chapter 4 ("Imitation of Life and the Depiction of Suburban Space") contrasts John Stahl's ...
More
After some discussion of the impact of the automobile on the shape of the twentieth-century American city, Chapter 4 ("Imitation of Life and the Depiction of Suburban Space") contrasts John Stahl's 1934 adaptation with Sirk's 1959 cinematic version of Fanny Hurst's best-selling 1933 novel. Among other things, this comparison shows how the director has inscribed the "color line" that divided African-Americans from whites after World War II into Lora Meredith's leafy suburb in the later remake. The historically informed interpretation of the built environment that supports this conclusion also establishes the general context for the final section of this book, which consists of two architectural case studies that are each devoted to one particularly significant film.Less
After some discussion of the impact of the automobile on the shape of the twentieth-century American city, Chapter 4 ("Imitation of Life and the Depiction of Suburban Space") contrasts John Stahl's 1934 adaptation with Sirk's 1959 cinematic version of Fanny Hurst's best-selling 1933 novel. Among other things, this comparison shows how the director has inscribed the "color line" that divided African-Americans from whites after World War II into Lora Meredith's leafy suburb in the later remake. The historically informed interpretation of the built environment that supports this conclusion also establishes the general context for the final section of this book, which consists of two architectural case studies that are each devoted to one particularly significant film.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 5 ("Final Chord and 'Die Neue Welt': The Mise-en-Scène of Aufbruch")examines the only film from Sirk's German period to depict twentieth-century urban life. In the prologue that the director ...
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Chapter 5 ("Final Chord and 'Die Neue Welt': The Mise-en-Scène of Aufbruch")examines the only film from Sirk's German period to depict twentieth-century urban life. In the prologue that the director added to the existing script, two antithetical aesthetics appear to underscore the philosophical and political disparities that distinguish a democratic New York from a Fascist Berlin. Because the architectural symbolism of each of these cities may be read both positively and negatively (from a Modernist and a National Socialist point of view), after outlining the main arguments on either side, the author then attempts to resolve the vexed question of which metropolis offers the most desirable "New World" of the future, based upon the formal and narrative evidence that is provided by the film.Less
Chapter 5 ("Final Chord and 'Die Neue Welt': The Mise-en-Scène of Aufbruch")examines the only film from Sirk's German period to depict twentieth-century urban life. In the prologue that the director added to the existing script, two antithetical aesthetics appear to underscore the philosophical and political disparities that distinguish a democratic New York from a Fascist Berlin. Because the architectural symbolism of each of these cities may be read both positively and negatively (from a Modernist and a National Socialist point of view), after outlining the main arguments on either side, the author then attempts to resolve the vexed question of which metropolis offers the most desirable "New World" of the future, based upon the formal and narrative evidence that is provided by the film.
Victoria L. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474409391
- eISBN:
- 9781474434737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409391.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Since every stage of Ron Kirby and Carey Scott's relationship is marked by alterations in their domestic environments, Chapter 6 ("Back to the Future: Modernist Architecture and All That Heaven ...
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Since every stage of Ron Kirby and Carey Scott's relationship is marked by alterations in their domestic environments, Chapter 6 ("Back to the Future: Modernist Architecture and All That Heaven Allows") explores some of the conflicting social and cultural connotations that have been encoded into their respective dwellings. For instance, Ron's progressive renovation of the Old Mill recapitulates the history of twentieth-century Modernist architecture in reverse. The final incarnation of this structure evokes Le Corbusier's Machine Age villas of the 1920s rather than Frank Lloyd Wright's more organic mid-century Modernist aesthetic, which dissents from the dominant 1950s American view of the ideal home by suggesting a less materialistic way of life. By contrast, Carey's suburban Colonial Revival residence represents the negation of the freedom from traditional conventions that Ron's living space ultimately implies.Less
Since every stage of Ron Kirby and Carey Scott's relationship is marked by alterations in their domestic environments, Chapter 6 ("Back to the Future: Modernist Architecture and All That Heaven Allows") explores some of the conflicting social and cultural connotations that have been encoded into their respective dwellings. For instance, Ron's progressive renovation of the Old Mill recapitulates the history of twentieth-century Modernist architecture in reverse. The final incarnation of this structure evokes Le Corbusier's Machine Age villas of the 1920s rather than Frank Lloyd Wright's more organic mid-century Modernist aesthetic, which dissents from the dominant 1950s American view of the ideal home by suggesting a less materialistic way of life. By contrast, Carey's suburban Colonial Revival residence represents the negation of the freedom from traditional conventions that Ron's living space ultimately implies.
