Maria DiBattista
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780195384512
- eISBN:
- 9780199350452
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384512.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, General
"Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars." These emotionally extravagant words bring to a close one of the most romantic melodramas in American film. This essay explores what it ...
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"Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars." These emotionally extravagant words bring to a close one of the most romantic melodramas in American film. This essay explores what it means to speak of love in such elevated terms, especially what it means for the film’s heroine, Charlotte Vale (a fearless Bette Davis), a young woman whose dream of love has been blighted by the blind, repressive dictates of her demon mother. Charlotte’s liberation is figured and experienced as a metamorphosis that makes her appear a Stranger both to others and to herself. Does Charlotte’s vision of love represent a sublime idea or the late-flowering dream of the "sentimental old fool" who earlier had shed tears of gratitude because a man had called her darling? Now, Voyager explores both these possibilities and finds them compatible, even necessary for each other.Less
"Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars." These emotionally extravagant words bring to a close one of the most romantic melodramas in American film. This essay explores what it means to speak of love in such elevated terms, especially what it means for the film’s heroine, Charlotte Vale (a fearless Bette Davis), a young woman whose dream of love has been blighted by the blind, repressive dictates of her demon mother. Charlotte’s liberation is figured and experienced as a metamorphosis that makes her appear a Stranger both to others and to herself. Does Charlotte’s vision of love represent a sublime idea or the late-flowering dream of the "sentimental old fool" who earlier had shed tears of gratitude because a man had called her darling? Now, Voyager explores both these possibilities and finds them compatible, even necessary for each other.
Liang Luo
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424592
- eISBN:
- 9781474444705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424592.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic ...
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Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic origins of Hong Kong horror cinema. This chapter surveys the changing representation of gender and horror in a series of films based on the White Snake legend from the 1920s to the 1970s. Centred on a very horrific concept (a monstrous snake disguised as a beauty and married to a human male), these films nonetheless enrich or even challenge our understanding of the genre of horror cinema in their service to a wide range of other genres: operatic performance, romantic melodrama, fantasy adventure, slapstick comedy, and social and political commentary. In addition to challenging the very concept of horror, this cluster of White Snake films poses further challenges to the idea of “Hong Kong cinema,” as it ranges from a Tokyo production, a Shanghai production, a Hong Kong-Japan coproduction, to a production based in Hong Kong with South Asian distributors, and a Hong Kong-Taiwan coproduction with a Shaw Brothers director.Less
Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic origins of Hong Kong horror cinema. This chapter surveys the changing representation of gender and horror in a series of films based on the White Snake legend from the 1920s to the 1970s. Centred on a very horrific concept (a monstrous snake disguised as a beauty and married to a human male), these films nonetheless enrich or even challenge our understanding of the genre of horror cinema in their service to a wide range of other genres: operatic performance, romantic melodrama, fantasy adventure, slapstick comedy, and social and political commentary. In addition to challenging the very concept of horror, this cluster of White Snake films poses further challenges to the idea of “Hong Kong cinema,” as it ranges from a Tokyo production, a Shanghai production, a Hong Kong-Japan coproduction, to a production based in Hong Kong with South Asian distributors, and a Hong Kong-Taiwan coproduction with a Shaw Brothers director.
