Martin O'Shaughnessy
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719091506
- eISBN:
- 9781781708590
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091506.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Laurent Cantet is of one France’s leading contemporary directors. He probes the evolution and fault-lines of contemporary society from the home to the workplace and from the Republican school to ...
More
Laurent Cantet is of one France’s leading contemporary directors. He probes the evolution and fault-lines of contemporary society from the home to the workplace and from the Republican school to globalized consumption more acutely than perhaps any other French film-maker. His films always challenge his characters’ assumptions about their world. But they also make their spectators rethink their position in relation to what they see. This is what makes Cantet such an important film-maker, the book argues. It explores Cantet’s unique working ‘method,’ his use of amateur actors and attempt to develop an egalitarian authorship that allows other voices to be heard rather than subsumed. It discusses his way of constructing films at the uneasy interface of the individual, the group and the broader social context and his recourse to melodramatic strategies and moments of shame to force social tensions into view. It shows how the roots of the well-known later films can be found in his early works. It explores the major fictions from Ressources humaines to the recent Foxfire, Confessions of a Girl Gang. It combines careful close analysis with attention to broader cinematic, social and political contexts while drawing on a range of important theorists from Pierre Bourdieu to Jacques Rancière, Michael Bakhtin and Mary Ann Doane. It concludes by examining how, resolutely contemporary of the current moment, Cantet helps us rethink the possibilities and limits of political cinema in a context in which old resistances have fallen silent and new forms of protest are only emergent.Less
Laurent Cantet is of one France’s leading contemporary directors. He probes the evolution and fault-lines of contemporary society from the home to the workplace and from the Republican school to globalized consumption more acutely than perhaps any other French film-maker. His films always challenge his characters’ assumptions about their world. But they also make their spectators rethink their position in relation to what they see. This is what makes Cantet such an important film-maker, the book argues. It explores Cantet’s unique working ‘method,’ his use of amateur actors and attempt to develop an egalitarian authorship that allows other voices to be heard rather than subsumed. It discusses his way of constructing films at the uneasy interface of the individual, the group and the broader social context and his recourse to melodramatic strategies and moments of shame to force social tensions into view. It shows how the roots of the well-known later films can be found in his early works. It explores the major fictions from Ressources humaines to the recent Foxfire, Confessions of a Girl Gang. It combines careful close analysis with attention to broader cinematic, social and political contexts while drawing on a range of important theorists from Pierre Bourdieu to Jacques Rancière, Michael Bakhtin and Mary Ann Doane. It concludes by examining how, resolutely contemporary of the current moment, Cantet helps us rethink the possibilities and limits of political cinema in a context in which old resistances have fallen silent and new forms of protest are only emergent.
Charles Burnetts
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748698196
- eISBN:
- 9781474434881
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748698196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The book examines how the “sentimental”, a term so often invoked in film criticism, has been mobilized, denigrated, quarantined or ignored over 300 years of aesthetic debate. Responding to the often ...
More
The book examines how the “sentimental”, a term so often invoked in film criticism, has been mobilized, denigrated, quarantined or ignored over 300 years of aesthetic debate. Responding to the often vexed question of what the sentimental means to various critical and popular constituencies, it argues for its continued conceptual value, less as an evaluative term (with its ongoing connotations of a stoical critical elitism), but as a theoretical tradition and taste category that speaks to the tensions between emotion and cognition in literary and visual culture. Using a meta-critical analysis of a wide range of philosophers and film theorists, and case-studies of Chaplin, Ford, Spielberg and various contemporary independent US filmmakers, the book proposes a more inclusive approach to the analysis of emotion in film studies to that offered by ‘cognitivist’ film scholars. It provides a thorough account of sentimentalism’s links with melodrama, a key ‘mode’ of American cinema, as both its conceptual and narratological cousin. It also speculates on the relevance of sentimentality to feminist and genre-based approaches to film, as well as more recent approaches in film philosophy, like ‘cine-ethics’, phenomenology and the impact of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy.Less
The book examines how the “sentimental”, a term so often invoked in film criticism, has been mobilized, denigrated, quarantined or ignored over 300 years of aesthetic debate. Responding to the often vexed question of what the sentimental means to various critical and popular constituencies, it argues for its continued conceptual value, less as an evaluative term (with its ongoing connotations of a stoical critical elitism), but as a theoretical tradition and taste category that speaks to the tensions between emotion and cognition in literary and visual culture. Using a meta-critical analysis of a wide range of philosophers and film theorists, and case-studies of Chaplin, Ford, Spielberg and various contemporary independent US filmmakers, the book proposes a more inclusive approach to the analysis of emotion in film studies to that offered by ‘cognitivist’ film scholars. It provides a thorough account of sentimentalism’s links with melodrama, a key ‘mode’ of American cinema, as both its conceptual and narratological cousin. It also speculates on the relevance of sentimentality to feminist and genre-based approaches to film, as well as more recent approaches in film philosophy, like ‘cine-ethics’, phenomenology and the impact of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy.
Sharon Willis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816692842
- eISBN:
- 9781452950730
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692842.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The civil rights struggle was convulsing the nation, its violence broadcast into every living room. Against this fraught background, Sidney Poitier emerged as an image of dignity, discipline, and ...
More
The civil rights struggle was convulsing the nation, its violence broadcast into every living room. Against this fraught background, Sidney Poitier emerged as an image of dignity, discipline, and moral authority. Here was the picture-perfect black man, helping German nuns build a chapel in The Lilies of the Field and overcoming the prejudices of recalcitrant students in To Sir with Love, a redneck sheriff in In the Heat of the Night, and a prospective father-in-law in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In his characters’ restrained responses to white people’s ignorance and bad behavior, Poitier represented racial reconciliation and reciprocal respect—the “Poitier effect” that Sharon Willis traces through cinema and television from the civil rights era to our own. The Poitier effect, in Willis’s account, is a function of white wishful thinking about race relations. It represents a dream of achieving racial reconciliation and equality without any substantive change to the white world. This notion of change without change conforms smoothly with a fantasy of colorblindness, a culture in which difference makes no difference. Willis demonstrates how Poitier’s embodiment of such a fantasy figures in the popular cinema of the civil rights era—and reasserts itself in recent melodramas such as The Long Walk Home, Pleasantville, Far from Heaven, and The Help. Willis’s book reveals how the Poitier effect, complicated by contemporary ideas about feminism, sexuality, and privilege, continues to inform our collective memory as well as our visions of a postracial society.Less
The civil rights struggle was convulsing the nation, its violence broadcast into every living room. Against this fraught background, Sidney Poitier emerged as an image of dignity, discipline, and moral authority. Here was the picture-perfect black man, helping German nuns build a chapel in The Lilies of the Field and overcoming the prejudices of recalcitrant students in To Sir with Love, a redneck sheriff in In the Heat of the Night, and a prospective father-in-law in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In his characters’ restrained responses to white people’s ignorance and bad behavior, Poitier represented racial reconciliation and reciprocal respect—the “Poitier effect” that Sharon Willis traces through cinema and television from the civil rights era to our own. The Poitier effect, in Willis’s account, is a function of white wishful thinking about race relations. It represents a dream of achieving racial reconciliation and equality without any substantive change to the white world. This notion of change without change conforms smoothly with a fantasy of colorblindness, a culture in which difference makes no difference. Willis demonstrates how Poitier’s embodiment of such a fantasy figures in the popular cinema of the civil rights era—and reasserts itself in recent melodramas such as The Long Walk Home, Pleasantville, Far from Heaven, and The Help. Willis’s book reveals how the Poitier effect, complicated by contemporary ideas about feminism, sexuality, and privilege, continues to inform our collective memory as well as our visions of a postracial society.
Carlotta Sorba
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719089695
- eISBN:
- 9781526104304
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089695.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Moving away from leisure institutions and building types to the transnational diffusion of specific cultural genres and experiences, this chapter traces the origins of ‘melodrama’ as a modern ...
More
Moving away from leisure institutions and building types to the transnational diffusion of specific cultural genres and experiences, this chapter traces the origins of ‘melodrama’ as a modern theatrical genre. It explores its impact in late eighteenth-century French Enlightenment discourse and early nineteenth-century Paris boulevard theatres, and analyses the subsequent diffusion and selective appropriation in England and Italy. As a new mixture of gestures, music and words, which spoke directly to the heart of men and women, the French genre of melodrame changed the theatrical experience of both popular and elite audiences. From 1802 onwards, melodramas of popular authors such as Pixérécourt et Ducange were extensively translated in Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Russia, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Achieving an extraordinary success as the most original product of a new theatrical era, melodramas were, however, appropriated in different ways in different national contexts. In England, the radical playwright Thomas Holcroft, a central figure in Anglo-French cultural exchanges, actively imported the French melodrama and helped to adapt it as a new theatrical genre to the specific English context. In Italy a relative lack of state control stimulated the smooth absorption of melodramatic forms and plots in Italian opera, with the unintended result that melodrama did not develop into a separate genre.Less
Moving away from leisure institutions and building types to the transnational diffusion of specific cultural genres and experiences, this chapter traces the origins of ‘melodrama’ as a modern theatrical genre. It explores its impact in late eighteenth-century French Enlightenment discourse and early nineteenth-century Paris boulevard theatres, and analyses the subsequent diffusion and selective appropriation in England and Italy. As a new mixture of gestures, music and words, which spoke directly to the heart of men and women, the French genre of melodrame changed the theatrical experience of both popular and elite audiences. From 1802 onwards, melodramas of popular authors such as Pixérécourt et Ducange were extensively translated in Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Russia, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Achieving an extraordinary success as the most original product of a new theatrical era, melodramas were, however, appropriated in different ways in different national contexts. In England, the radical playwright Thomas Holcroft, a central figure in Anglo-French cultural exchanges, actively imported the French melodrama and helped to adapt it as a new theatrical genre to the specific English context. In Italy a relative lack of state control stimulated the smooth absorption of melodramatic forms and plots in Italian opera, with the unintended result that melodrama did not develop into a separate genre.
Ruth Livesey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526123503
- eISBN:
- 9781526141972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526123503.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter explores Harkness’s first novel in the context of socialist fiction and the future of the modern novel in the 1880s. A City Girl pivots on one of the staple formulae of earlier ...
More
This chapter explores Harkness’s first novel in the context of socialist fiction and the future of the modern novel in the 1880s. A City Girl pivots on one of the staple formulae of earlier nineteenth-century domestic melodrama and its radical political possibilities: a cross-class romantic relationship in which a working-class girl is seduced and abandoned by a gentleman. Unpicking how this novel reworks the inherited forms of radical melodrama helps to shed new light on Friedrich Engels’s famous critique of the work’s relation to realism and the status of literary naturalism in 1880s Britain. The Princess Casamassima – Henry James’s self-consciously experimental foray into naturalism and the political activism of 1880s London – serves as a counterpoint to illustrate the pressure of representation in the modernity of late Victorian mass culture. The chapter ends by returning to Katharine Buildings, Whitechapel, and Harkness’s time spent there researching A City Girl. Drawing on the correspondence and record books of Ella Pycroft, the resident lady rent collector, and Harkness’s cousin Beatrice Potter Webb, this chapter presents a counter-narrative that suggests how the residents themselves tried to write back their own life stories against an interpretative community of social activists, philanthropists, novelists, and political agents.Less
This chapter explores Harkness’s first novel in the context of socialist fiction and the future of the modern novel in the 1880s. A City Girl pivots on one of the staple formulae of earlier nineteenth-century domestic melodrama and its radical political possibilities: a cross-class romantic relationship in which a working-class girl is seduced and abandoned by a gentleman. Unpicking how this novel reworks the inherited forms of radical melodrama helps to shed new light on Friedrich Engels’s famous critique of the work’s relation to realism and the status of literary naturalism in 1880s Britain. The Princess Casamassima – Henry James’s self-consciously experimental foray into naturalism and the political activism of 1880s London – serves as a counterpoint to illustrate the pressure of representation in the modernity of late Victorian mass culture. The chapter ends by returning to Katharine Buildings, Whitechapel, and Harkness’s time spent there researching A City Girl. Drawing on the correspondence and record books of Ella Pycroft, the resident lady rent collector, and Harkness’s cousin Beatrice Potter Webb, this chapter presents a counter-narrative that suggests how the residents themselves tried to write back their own life stories against an interpretative community of social activists, philanthropists, novelists, and political agents.
Deborah Mutch
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526123503
- eISBN:
- 9781526141972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526123503.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Margaret Harkness’s serial story ‘Connie’ appeared in the socialist Labour Elector in 1893–94, but was left unfinished when the periodical folded, reaching no conclusion to the cross-class romance ...
More
Margaret Harkness’s serial story ‘Connie’ appeared in the socialist Labour Elector in 1893–94, but was left unfinished when the periodical folded, reaching no conclusion to the cross-class romance between actress Connie and her lover, the son of a rural landowner. This chapter explores how Harkness uses melodrama in the serial to create a specific form of socialism: one based on the Tory narratives of duty, guidance, and a harmonious relationship across social classes. By focusing on Harkness’s use of the dual lenses of melodrama and Tory socialism, this chapter demonstrates the ways that Harkness uses the former to elucidate working-class women’s precarious social position under capitalism, and the latter to indicate possibilities for the amelioration of this compromised position.Less
Margaret Harkness’s serial story ‘Connie’ appeared in the socialist Labour Elector in 1893–94, but was left unfinished when the periodical folded, reaching no conclusion to the cross-class romance between actress Connie and her lover, the son of a rural landowner. This chapter explores how Harkness uses melodrama in the serial to create a specific form of socialism: one based on the Tory narratives of duty, guidance, and a harmonious relationship across social classes. By focusing on Harkness’s use of the dual lenses of melodrama and Tory socialism, this chapter demonstrates the ways that Harkness uses the former to elucidate working-class women’s precarious social position under capitalism, and the latter to indicate possibilities for the amelioration of this compromised position.
G. Andrew Stuckey
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9789888390816
- eISBN:
- 9789888455133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390816.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Li Yu, one of the few female Chinese film directors, has focused on female characters and issues women face. Lost in Beijing (2007) tells the story of Liu Pingguo, a migrant worker in Beijing who is ...
More
Li Yu, one of the few female Chinese film directors, has focused on female characters and issues women face. Lost in Beijing (2007) tells the story of Liu Pingguo, a migrant worker in Beijing who is raped by her boss. When she becomes pregnant, her husband and boss bargain over possession of her and the child she is carrying. She is reduced to a commodity function exchanged for its value in conceiving and bearing a child. Nevertheless, over the course of the film, a Mercedes-Benz serves not only as the basic status symbol for her boss but also a much more ambivalent role as the space of negotiation between the characters in the film. The final images of the film show this car breaking down on a major Beijing street. Simultaneously, Pingguo has left her situation, in an audacious recapitulation of Nora’s departure at the end of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It is in this symbolic deployment of the car in combination with her escape that the film subtly but provocatively dismantles the patriarchy’s power over Pingguo.Less
Li Yu, one of the few female Chinese film directors, has focused on female characters and issues women face. Lost in Beijing (2007) tells the story of Liu Pingguo, a migrant worker in Beijing who is raped by her boss. When she becomes pregnant, her husband and boss bargain over possession of her and the child she is carrying. She is reduced to a commodity function exchanged for its value in conceiving and bearing a child. Nevertheless, over the course of the film, a Mercedes-Benz serves not only as the basic status symbol for her boss but also a much more ambivalent role as the space of negotiation between the characters in the film. The final images of the film show this car breaking down on a major Beijing street. Simultaneously, Pingguo has left her situation, in an audacious recapitulation of Nora’s departure at the end of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It is in this symbolic deployment of the car in combination with her escape that the film subtly but provocatively dismantles the patriarchy’s power over Pingguo.
Keith Corson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496807045
- eISBN:
- 9781496807083
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807045.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Since Perry’s plays share with his film production a similar thematic focus on Christian morality, Keith Corson’s contribution to this collection charts the rise of regional theatre and the ...
More
Since Perry’s plays share with his film production a similar thematic focus on Christian morality, Keith Corson’s contribution to this collection charts the rise of regional theatre and the translation of the financial, aesthetic, and political model of “gospel theatre’s” urban circuit to the multiplex. In the process of identifying the evangelical influences of some contemporary African American films, which Corson calls “gospelcinema,” the chapter compares Perry’s films with televangelist T.D.Jakes’s in order to argue that their films have helped reshape notions of a Black film audience. Gospel cinema narratives often function as morality tales that align closely with the rise of the Black mega church as they express a middleclass idealism that is rooted in a doctrine of prosperity, self-help, and individualism. Yet, as Corson defines it, gospel cinema also features a unique blend of melodrama, folk humor, and camp aesthetics that complicate a simple faith-based reading.Less
Since Perry’s plays share with his film production a similar thematic focus on Christian morality, Keith Corson’s contribution to this collection charts the rise of regional theatre and the translation of the financial, aesthetic, and political model of “gospel theatre’s” urban circuit to the multiplex. In the process of identifying the evangelical influences of some contemporary African American films, which Corson calls “gospelcinema,” the chapter compares Perry’s films with televangelist T.D.Jakes’s in order to argue that their films have helped reshape notions of a Black film audience. Gospel cinema narratives often function as morality tales that align closely with the rise of the Black mega church as they express a middleclass idealism that is rooted in a doctrine of prosperity, self-help, and individualism. Yet, as Corson defines it, gospel cinema also features a unique blend of melodrama, folk humor, and camp aesthetics that complicate a simple faith-based reading.
Gary Bettinson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789888139293
- eISBN:
- 9789888313082
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888139293.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter sets out to clarify Wong Kar-wai’s reliance on popular genre, qualifying the critical perspective that Wong is an “anti-genre” filmmaker. Rather, genre is seen here to facilitate three ...
More
This chapter sets out to clarify Wong Kar-wai’s reliance on popular genre, qualifying the critical perspective that Wong is an “anti-genre” filmmaker. Rather, genre is seen here to facilitate three interlinked objectives for Wong: it functions to commercial advantage, attracting financiers and audiences; it animates major authorial preoccupations; and it permits Wong’s cinephilia full play. The chapter goes on to offer a large-scale analysis of In the Mood for Love and the ways in which it negotiates the conventions of traditional melodrama. This analysis isolates the prime thematic concerns that inform so many of Wong’s characters and stories, manifest within In the Mood for Love through a narrative emphasis on fate, personal responsibility, authenticity, chance, and coincidence.Less
This chapter sets out to clarify Wong Kar-wai’s reliance on popular genre, qualifying the critical perspective that Wong is an “anti-genre” filmmaker. Rather, genre is seen here to facilitate three interlinked objectives for Wong: it functions to commercial advantage, attracting financiers and audiences; it animates major authorial preoccupations; and it permits Wong’s cinephilia full play. The chapter goes on to offer a large-scale analysis of In the Mood for Love and the ways in which it negotiates the conventions of traditional melodrama. This analysis isolates the prime thematic concerns that inform so many of Wong’s characters and stories, manifest within In the Mood for Love through a narrative emphasis on fate, personal responsibility, authenticity, chance, and coincidence.
Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 6: “Cinema and Prison Reform” examines how penal reformers appropriated cinema for their cause, addressing not only the moral rehabilitation of individual prisoners, but also changes in ...
More
Chapter 6: “Cinema and Prison Reform” examines how penal reformers appropriated cinema for their cause, addressing not only the moral rehabilitation of individual prisoners, but also changes in institutional policy. Paying specific attention to films made by prison reformers like Katherine R. Bleecker, who in 1915 shot footage at three of New York State’s biggest penal institutions (Auburn, Sing Sing, and Great Meadow), the chapter explores where these films circulated (in prisons and outside), what publicity they generated, and in cases where the films no longer survive, evidence of their impact (if any) on prison conditions. The chapter expands the optic of prison reform films to an analysis of commercially made films from the late teens and twenties whose narratives and object lessons were hailed by the press as powerful propaganda for reformist measures, as even more powerful in affecting change as films made specifically for that purpose.Less
Chapter 6: “Cinema and Prison Reform” examines how penal reformers appropriated cinema for their cause, addressing not only the moral rehabilitation of individual prisoners, but also changes in institutional policy. Paying specific attention to films made by prison reformers like Katherine R. Bleecker, who in 1915 shot footage at three of New York State’s biggest penal institutions (Auburn, Sing Sing, and Great Meadow), the chapter explores where these films circulated (in prisons and outside), what publicity they generated, and in cases where the films no longer survive, evidence of their impact (if any) on prison conditions. The chapter expands the optic of prison reform films to an analysis of commercially made films from the late teens and twenties whose narratives and object lessons were hailed by the press as powerful propaganda for reformist measures, as even more powerful in affecting change as films made specifically for that purpose.
Louis Bayman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748656424
- eISBN:
- 9781474400947
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748656424.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and ...
More
After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and redefined popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. This book elucidates the insight they give into a post-war society between war and economic miracle, and examines their status as mass products for a still largely peasant culture in which the ephemera of popular enjoyment maintained aspects of ritual devotion. The Operatic and the Everyday argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It re-thinks film history in relation to family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare, and opera films, considering the popular worldview they construct alongside questions of gender, class and national culture. It provides interpretive frameworks for aesthetics, emotions, ideas and the function of culture within society in light of the combination of generic entertainment and political and artistic radicalism that melodrama enables. As such it sheds new light on established topics in Italian cinema including realism, arthouse auteurism and postwar modernism, considering the revolutionary artistic developments of Rossellini, De Sica and Antonioni in relation to their broader contexts. The book places film melodrama at the intersection of mass cultural forms, connecting Italy’s operatic traditions, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, iconography, popular literature and magazines, to the canonical melodramatists Visconti and Matarazzo. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotion of a truly popular form.Less
After the war audiences filled Italian cinemas to watch films of passion and pathos. Highly emotional and consciously theatrical, these melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, and redefined popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. This book elucidates the insight they give into a post-war society between war and economic miracle, and examines their status as mass products for a still largely peasant culture in which the ephemera of popular enjoyment maintained aspects of ritual devotion. The Operatic and the Everyday argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It re-thinks film history in relation to family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare, and opera films, considering the popular worldview they construct alongside questions of gender, class and national culture. It provides interpretive frameworks for aesthetics, emotions, ideas and the function of culture within society in light of the combination of generic entertainment and political and artistic radicalism that melodrama enables. As such it sheds new light on established topics in Italian cinema including realism, arthouse auteurism and postwar modernism, considering the revolutionary artistic developments of Rossellini, De Sica and Antonioni in relation to their broader contexts. The book places film melodrama at the intersection of mass cultural forms, connecting Italy’s operatic traditions, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, iconography, popular literature and magazines, to the canonical melodramatists Visconti and Matarazzo. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotion of a truly popular form.
Gregory Paschalidis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719082399
- eISBN:
- 9781781707302
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082399.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
The introduction of a regular television service in Greece coincided with the establishment of the Colonels’ dictatorship, and some of the most popular and best-remembered programmes from the ...
More
The introduction of a regular television service in Greece coincided with the establishment of the Colonels’ dictatorship, and some of the most popular and best-remembered programmes from the dictatorship era were made and shown by its own army-run channel (YENED). This chapter examines two highly popular drama serials from the period, The Unknown War (Ο Άγνωστος Πόλεμος) and Our Neighbourhood (Η Γειτονιά), seeking to account for their popular appeal. Although both appear to embody values promoted by the dictatorship and might be read as highly effective television propaganda, the author argues that their appeal relies heavily on long-established ingredients of melodrama, realism and sentimentality and does not necessarily depend upon audiences embracing the political values of the Colonels’ regime.Less
The introduction of a regular television service in Greece coincided with the establishment of the Colonels’ dictatorship, and some of the most popular and best-remembered programmes from the dictatorship era were made and shown by its own army-run channel (YENED). This chapter examines two highly popular drama serials from the period, The Unknown War (Ο Άγνωστος Πόλεμος) and Our Neighbourhood (Η Γειτονιά), seeking to account for their popular appeal. Although both appear to embody values promoted by the dictatorship and might be read as highly effective television propaganda, the author argues that their appeal relies heavily on long-established ingredients of melodrama, realism and sentimentality and does not necessarily depend upon audiences embracing the political values of the Colonels’ regime.
Irena Carpentier Reifová
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719082399
- eISBN:
- 9781781707302
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082399.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Using the 1976 serial Muž na radnici (Man at City Hall) as a case study, this chapter investigates the Czechoslovak ‘seriál’ as emblematic of the ‘normalisation’ era of Czechoslovak television. The ...
More
Using the 1976 serial Muž na radnici (Man at City Hall) as a case study, this chapter investigates the Czechoslovak ‘seriál’ as emblematic of the ‘normalisation’ era of Czechoslovak television. The authors argue that the Czechoslovak ‘seriál’ combines two types of storyline – ideological and melodramatic – with the former dominant but reliant on the latter to legitimise it. They trace the sophisticated relationship between ideological and melodramatic storylines in Man at City Hall and argue that the popular acceptance of the serial arose largely from viewers’ ability to identify with the emotional elements within the melodramatic line. However, the ideological content of the serial, which supported the aims of the Czechoslovak communist party, was necessary for its production to be approved. Finally, the authors argue that the co-presence of ideological and melodramatic storylines is a factor in explaining the popularity of the serial genre among Czechoslovak audiences of the time.Less
Using the 1976 serial Muž na radnici (Man at City Hall) as a case study, this chapter investigates the Czechoslovak ‘seriál’ as emblematic of the ‘normalisation’ era of Czechoslovak television. The authors argue that the Czechoslovak ‘seriál’ combines two types of storyline – ideological and melodramatic – with the former dominant but reliant on the latter to legitimise it. They trace the sophisticated relationship between ideological and melodramatic storylines in Man at City Hall and argue that the popular acceptance of the serial arose largely from viewers’ ability to identify with the emotional elements within the melodramatic line. However, the ideological content of the serial, which supported the aims of the Czechoslovak communist party, was necessary for its production to be approved. Finally, the authors argue that the co-presence of ideological and melodramatic storylines is a factor in explaining the popularity of the serial genre among Czechoslovak audiences of the time.
Mandy Merck
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099564
- eISBN:
- 9781526109767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099564.003.0017
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In the midst of Princess Margaret’s 1950s romance with RAF Captain Peter Townsend, Malcolm Muggeridge wamed that the new celebrity coverage of the royal family would end in tears. But in 2006, ...
More
In the midst of Princess Margaret’s 1950s romance with RAF Captain Peter Townsend, Malcolm Muggeridge wamed that the new celebrity coverage of the royal family would end in tears. But in 2006, Stephen Frears’ The Queen proved that tears could enhance the popularity of the British monarchy, creating what film critic David Thomson called “the most sophisticated public relations boost HRH had had in 20 years”. In this depiction of the fateful week after the death of Diana in 1997, docudrama - the fictionalized representation of real people and events - is trumped by melodrama, with its pathos, its appeal for moral recognition and its highly expressive mise-en-scene. The fanner (represented by actual news footage) is the genre of the film’s “queen of hearts”, Diana. The latter (represented by the dramatic fiction written by Morgan) is that of its “queen of a nation”, Elizabeth II. In its opposition oftwo ambitious queens, one romantic, one worldly, the film echoes Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 proto-melodrama, Mary Stuart. More than two centuries later, the older genre triumphs, rendering the Queen’s fictional world more vivid and affecting than the actual images ofthe real-life Diana. Much of this triumph can be attributed to Helen Mirren, who brings the prestige of her star persona to a monarch in danger ofbeing overshadowed by the celebrity of her rival. In an unusually forthright discussion of royalty and celebrity, The Queen draws the two regimes of power together in a single figure, who finishes the film with a declamation on “glamour and tears”.Less
In the midst of Princess Margaret’s 1950s romance with RAF Captain Peter Townsend, Malcolm Muggeridge wamed that the new celebrity coverage of the royal family would end in tears. But in 2006, Stephen Frears’ The Queen proved that tears could enhance the popularity of the British monarchy, creating what film critic David Thomson called “the most sophisticated public relations boost HRH had had in 20 years”. In this depiction of the fateful week after the death of Diana in 1997, docudrama - the fictionalized representation of real people and events - is trumped by melodrama, with its pathos, its appeal for moral recognition and its highly expressive mise-en-scene. The fanner (represented by actual news footage) is the genre of the film’s “queen of hearts”, Diana. The latter (represented by the dramatic fiction written by Morgan) is that of its “queen of a nation”, Elizabeth II. In its opposition oftwo ambitious queens, one romantic, one worldly, the film echoes Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 proto-melodrama, Mary Stuart. More than two centuries later, the older genre triumphs, rendering the Queen’s fictional world more vivid and affecting than the actual images ofthe real-life Diana. Much of this triumph can be attributed to Helen Mirren, who brings the prestige of her star persona to a monarch in danger ofbeing overshadowed by the celebrity of her rival. In an unusually forthright discussion of royalty and celebrity, The Queen draws the two regimes of power together in a single figure, who finishes the film with a declamation on “glamour and tears”.
Nicola Rehling
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099564
- eISBN:
- 9781526109767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099564.003.0018
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The King’s Speech is paradigmatic of the contemporary trend of representing the British monarchy through melodrama, a mode the traditionally sides with the powerless. “Bertie” (George VI) is a ...
More
The King’s Speech is paradigmatic of the contemporary trend of representing the British monarchy through melodrama, a mode the traditionally sides with the powerless. “Bertie” (George VI) is a melodramatic figure whose integrity is underscored, in Linda Williams’ phrase, by “the literal suffering of an agonized body”. His speech impediment literalizes the psychic wounds caused by both the demands of royalty and his austere father in this Oedipal melodrama. Like his familiar nickname, his stammering renders him identifiable, despite his selfconfessed ignorance ofhis common subj ects. Melodrama, in Peter Brooks’ influential formulation, offers moral legibility in a post-sacred era, but only in individualized terms. Bertie’s hysterical symptoms confirm his virtue and that of the monarchy as institution via a relentless focus on the private realm, with the spectre of class antagonisms and republican protests evoked only to be dismissed. Bertie’s stammering speaks the burden of royalty, while also providing a vehicle for exploring the effects of the reterritorialization of the public/private distinction in the wake of the new mass media. His final broadcast unites the nation, reinvigorating the national body ailing from his brother’s abdication, triumphantly readying it for war.Less
The King’s Speech is paradigmatic of the contemporary trend of representing the British monarchy through melodrama, a mode the traditionally sides with the powerless. “Bertie” (George VI) is a melodramatic figure whose integrity is underscored, in Linda Williams’ phrase, by “the literal suffering of an agonized body”. His speech impediment literalizes the psychic wounds caused by both the demands of royalty and his austere father in this Oedipal melodrama. Like his familiar nickname, his stammering renders him identifiable, despite his selfconfessed ignorance ofhis common subj ects. Melodrama, in Peter Brooks’ influential formulation, offers moral legibility in a post-sacred era, but only in individualized terms. Bertie’s hysterical symptoms confirm his virtue and that of the monarchy as institution via a relentless focus on the private realm, with the spectre of class antagonisms and republican protests evoked only to be dismissed. Bertie’s stammering speaks the burden of royalty, while also providing a vehicle for exploring the effects of the reterritorialization of the public/private distinction in the wake of the new mass media. His final broadcast unites the nation, reinvigorating the national body ailing from his brother’s abdication, triumphantly readying it for war.
Hermann Kappelhoff
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170727
- eISBN:
- 9780231539319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170727.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The closing chapter examines Almodóvar's films as a contemporary reformulation of the “utopia of film.” As exemplary yet singular works of Western Cinema, they do not follow the logic of ...
More
The closing chapter examines Almodóvar's films as a contemporary reformulation of the “utopia of film.” As exemplary yet singular works of Western Cinema, they do not follow the logic of deconstruction, but instead connect a postmodern play of signs with the reflection on aesthetic forms in classical Hollywood cinema in order to stage figurations of a new sensitivity—one that seeks to ground itself in the worn-out platitudes, stereotypes, and cliché forms of a feeling and thinking that has become thoroughly mediated. Newly accentuating the physical basis of social being, the films are at the same time condensed reflections on the primary constellation of western European cinema. They work diligently on the media formations of an everyday world of feelings, a world marked as much by memories of fascism as by the entertainment of Hollywood.Less
The closing chapter examines Almodóvar's films as a contemporary reformulation of the “utopia of film.” As exemplary yet singular works of Western Cinema, they do not follow the logic of deconstruction, but instead connect a postmodern play of signs with the reflection on aesthetic forms in classical Hollywood cinema in order to stage figurations of a new sensitivity—one that seeks to ground itself in the worn-out platitudes, stereotypes, and cliché forms of a feeling and thinking that has become thoroughly mediated. Newly accentuating the physical basis of social being, the films are at the same time condensed reflections on the primary constellation of western European cinema. They work diligently on the media formations of an everyday world of feelings, a world marked as much by memories of fascism as by the entertainment of Hollywood.
R. S. White
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099748
- eISBN:
- 9781526121165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099748.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter shows how Shakespeare innovated his unique brand of romantic comedy under the influence of prose romance and Lyly’s dramatized romance. The resulting hybrid form was so successful that ...
More
This chapter shows how Shakespeare innovated his unique brand of romantic comedy under the influence of prose romance and Lyly’s dramatized romance. The resulting hybrid form was so successful that it is an underpinning structural formula for romantic comedy in many modern movies, even ones where Shakespeare is not a direct source. His most successful examples became conflated through the Western educational system into a recognisable and very flexible genre, tracing how ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ through successive stages involving centrally an exotic, transforming location such as a forest. Even twentieth century critics such as Northrop Frye played their part in popularising the genre and paving the way into movies, because of their strong influence on students in the twentieth century.Less
This chapter shows how Shakespeare innovated his unique brand of romantic comedy under the influence of prose romance and Lyly’s dramatized romance. The resulting hybrid form was so successful that it is an underpinning structural formula for romantic comedy in many modern movies, even ones where Shakespeare is not a direct source. His most successful examples became conflated through the Western educational system into a recognisable and very flexible genre, tracing how ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ through successive stages involving centrally an exotic, transforming location such as a forest. Even twentieth century critics such as Northrop Frye played their part in popularising the genre and paving the way into movies, because of their strong influence on students in the twentieth century.
R. S. White
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099748
- eISBN:
- 9781526121165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099748.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Romeo and Juliet is the most obvious example of a single play by Shakespeare influencing a myriad of movies, to the extent that we can recognize a ‘romeo-and-juliet’ genre film even when Shakespeare ...
More
Romeo and Juliet is the most obvious example of a single play by Shakespeare influencing a myriad of movies, to the extent that we can recognize a ‘romeo-and-juliet’ genre film even when Shakespeare is not referenced. Although the tales of romantic tragedy go much further back than Shakespeare, it is his version which has proved the most durable in its specific conventions and the kind of love represented in it. There have been a series of watershed film adaptations of the play itself, such as those by Cukor, Zeffirelli, and Luhrman, but this chapter takes the occasion to trace the play’s more subtle and indirect influence into films made in a range of countries, the United States, the Czech Republic, Wales, and India.Less
Romeo and Juliet is the most obvious example of a single play by Shakespeare influencing a myriad of movies, to the extent that we can recognize a ‘romeo-and-juliet’ genre film even when Shakespeare is not referenced. Although the tales of romantic tragedy go much further back than Shakespeare, it is his version which has proved the most durable in its specific conventions and the kind of love represented in it. There have been a series of watershed film adaptations of the play itself, such as those by Cukor, Zeffirelli, and Luhrman, but this chapter takes the occasion to trace the play’s more subtle and indirect influence into films made in a range of countries, the United States, the Czech Republic, Wales, and India.
Birger Langkjær
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474428729
- eISBN:
- 9781474449595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428729.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter connects Bier’s approach to genre with Danish cinema’s gradual shift, apparent since the 1990s, from realism and folk comedy to mainstream genres with greater international appeals. ...
More
This chapter connects Bier’s approach to genre with Danish cinema’s gradual shift, apparent since the 1990s, from realism and folk comedy to mainstream genres with greater international appeals. Author Birger Langkjær suggests that Bier’s romantic comedies and dramas evidence this broader shift, which he locates in a preference for ‘tight narrative structures’ observable in Danish cinema during the last several decades. Langkjær narrows his focus to Bier’s dramas, including Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt 2002), Brothers (Brødre 2004), After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet 2006), and In a Better World (Hævnen 2010), which have attracted significant international attention and praise, while also provoking criticism, particularly of their melodramatic and/or ‘schematic’ properties. Langkjær scrutinizes such criticism by examining the narrative structures of Bier’s dramas and proposing art cinema and realism as genres better suited to illuminating how Bier’s dramas function. He specifically highlights the tension between ‘the macro-structures of melodramatic story-telling and film realism’ and the films’ evocations of ‘a psychological intimacy with [their] characters and the trivialities’ of their everyday lives. It is precisely this tension, he concludes, that distinguishes Bier’s dramas from traditional Danish realism and the formulas conventionally associated with melodrama.Less
This chapter connects Bier’s approach to genre with Danish cinema’s gradual shift, apparent since the 1990s, from realism and folk comedy to mainstream genres with greater international appeals. Author Birger Langkjær suggests that Bier’s romantic comedies and dramas evidence this broader shift, which he locates in a preference for ‘tight narrative structures’ observable in Danish cinema during the last several decades. Langkjær narrows his focus to Bier’s dramas, including Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt 2002), Brothers (Brødre 2004), After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet 2006), and In a Better World (Hævnen 2010), which have attracted significant international attention and praise, while also provoking criticism, particularly of their melodramatic and/or ‘schematic’ properties. Langkjær scrutinizes such criticism by examining the narrative structures of Bier’s dramas and proposing art cinema and realism as genres better suited to illuminating how Bier’s dramas function. He specifically highlights the tension between ‘the macro-structures of melodramatic story-telling and film realism’ and the films’ evocations of ‘a psychological intimacy with [their] characters and the trivialities’ of their everyday lives. It is precisely this tension, he concludes, that distinguishes Bier’s dramas from traditional Danish realism and the formulas conventionally associated with melodrama.
Joseph Pomp
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474403016
- eISBN:
- 9781474422031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403016.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Joseph Pomp offers an analysis of Spencer’s Mountain, a film Daves’ adapted from the novel by Earl Hamner Jr. He observes that Daves’ lack of recognition by auteur theorists was that he often delved ...
More
Joseph Pomp offers an analysis of Spencer’s Mountain, a film Daves’ adapted from the novel by Earl Hamner Jr. He observes that Daves’ lack of recognition by auteur theorists was that he often delved into melodramatic themes in his Westerns, themes out of favour with those who preferred the course masculinity of a John Ford or a Raoul Walsh, and who associated the melodrama with a female audience. Pomp suggests that Spencer’s Mountain provides a key window into Daves’ views on American family values, education, and class, arguing that Daves deconstructed melodrama’s ‘classic realist’ paradigm by considering a nascent feminist agenda that undermines the patriarchal underpinnings of the source novel. This, argues Pomp, creates an unusual mix – rendering Spencer’s Mountain different from most other Westerns of the period but also different from most melodramas. Ultimately, Pomp argues, Spencer’s Mountain suggests that fierce, heroic individualism has no place in Daves’ cinematic universe.Less
Joseph Pomp offers an analysis of Spencer’s Mountain, a film Daves’ adapted from the novel by Earl Hamner Jr. He observes that Daves’ lack of recognition by auteur theorists was that he often delved into melodramatic themes in his Westerns, themes out of favour with those who preferred the course masculinity of a John Ford or a Raoul Walsh, and who associated the melodrama with a female audience. Pomp suggests that Spencer’s Mountain provides a key window into Daves’ views on American family values, education, and class, arguing that Daves deconstructed melodrama’s ‘classic realist’ paradigm by considering a nascent feminist agenda that undermines the patriarchal underpinnings of the source novel. This, argues Pomp, creates an unusual mix – rendering Spencer’s Mountain different from most other Westerns of the period but also different from most melodramas. Ultimately, Pomp argues, Spencer’s Mountain suggests that fierce, heroic individualism has no place in Daves’ cinematic universe.
