Ian Scott and Henry Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099168
- eISBN:
- 9781526115010
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099168.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book charts and analyses the work of Oliver Stone – arguably one of the foremost political filmmakers in Hollywood during the last thirty years.
Drawing on previously unseen production files ...
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This book charts and analyses the work of Oliver Stone – arguably one of the foremost political filmmakers in Hollywood during the last thirty years.
Drawing on previously unseen production files from Oliver Stone’s personal archives and hours of interviews both with Stone and a range of present and former associates within the industry, the book employs a thematic structure to explore Stone’s life and work in terms of war, politics, money, love and corporations. This allows the authors both to provide a synthesis of earlier and later film work as well as locate that work within Stone’s developing critique of government.
The book explores the development of aesthetic changes in Stone’s filmmaking and locates those changes within ongoing academic debates about the relationship between film and history as well as wider debates about Hollywood and the film industry. All of this is explored with detailed reference to the films themselves and related to a set of wider concerns that Stone has sought to grapple with -the American Century, exceptionalism and the American Dream, global empire, government surveillance and corporate accountability.
The book concludes with a perspective on Stone’s ‘brand’ as not just an auteur and commercially viable independent filmmaker but as an activist arguing for a very distinct kind of American exceptionalism that seeks a positive role for the US globally whilst eschewing military adventurism.Less
This book charts and analyses the work of Oliver Stone – arguably one of the foremost political filmmakers in Hollywood during the last thirty years.
Drawing on previously unseen production files from Oliver Stone’s personal archives and hours of interviews both with Stone and a range of present and former associates within the industry, the book employs a thematic structure to explore Stone’s life and work in terms of war, politics, money, love and corporations. This allows the authors both to provide a synthesis of earlier and later film work as well as locate that work within Stone’s developing critique of government.
The book explores the development of aesthetic changes in Stone’s filmmaking and locates those changes within ongoing academic debates about the relationship between film and history as well as wider debates about Hollywood and the film industry. All of this is explored with detailed reference to the films themselves and related to a set of wider concerns that Stone has sought to grapple with -the American Century, exceptionalism and the American Dream, global empire, government surveillance and corporate accountability.
The book concludes with a perspective on Stone’s ‘brand’ as not just an auteur and commercially viable independent filmmaker but as an activist arguing for a very distinct kind of American exceptionalism that seeks a positive role for the US globally whilst eschewing military adventurism.
Rob Stone
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719072000
- eISBN:
- 9781781701171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719072000.003.0032
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter maps out the current works of Julio Medem. Medem has aspired to a concept of auteurism, and now, after five fictions and one documentary in which he resembles the mythological auteur, he ...
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This chapter maps out the current works of Julio Medem. Medem has aspired to a concept of auteurism, and now, after five fictions and one documentary in which he resembles the mythological auteur, he faces the task of maintaining what is a deeply felt condition that can only be safeguarded by his imagination. Options for Medem include the seemingly ‘all or nothing’ gambit of Aitor, from whose inevitable controversy he may never recover, but which, if successful in artistic and commercial terms, would take him beyond the political expropriation of the film and any bad feeling in the Spanish media. Medem is a work in progress, busy constructing himself as auteur in the likeness of his own ambition. His story has been one of learning the responsibilities of authorship while enjoying the privileges of auteurism.Less
This chapter maps out the current works of Julio Medem. Medem has aspired to a concept of auteurism, and now, after five fictions and one documentary in which he resembles the mythological auteur, he faces the task of maintaining what is a deeply felt condition that can only be safeguarded by his imagination. Options for Medem include the seemingly ‘all or nothing’ gambit of Aitor, from whose inevitable controversy he may never recover, but which, if successful in artistic and commercial terms, would take him beyond the political expropriation of the film and any bad feeling in the Spanish media. Medem is a work in progress, busy constructing himself as auteur in the likeness of his own ambition. His story has been one of learning the responsibilities of authorship while enjoying the privileges of auteurism.
Jeff Menne
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038822
- eISBN:
- 9780252096785
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038822.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of ...
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Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, this book argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, the book reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1972) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, the book illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family—and how his studio, American Zoetrope, came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.Less
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, this book argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, the book reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1972) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, the book illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family—and how his studio, American Zoetrope, came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.
Sarah Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748693580
- eISBN:
- 9781474444668
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693580.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter presents a critical examination of the wider context of
the film industry using Ginger & Rosa as a lens through which to examine the three main professional working frameworks that film ...
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This chapter presents a critical examination of the wider context of
the film industry using Ginger & Rosa as a lens through which to examine the three main professional working frameworks that film industry professionals operate within - the network, the department and the project itself, the film.
Drawing on interviews with established film professionals, the chapter examines these three distinctive, yet overlapping spheres, their intersections, their challenges and their moments of contradiction.
The chapter extrapolates the organisational structure as specific to the Ginger & Rosa ‘project’ and examines in detail the structures and working relationships of three different departments–Camera/Electrical, Assistant Director (AD), Production and Post-production.
These discussions draw out the complex interplay between, on the one side, a highly craft-based, traditional classical narrative film production, and, on the other, a production shaped by new digital technologies and interstitial work specific to the film-to-data moment.
Through the mapping of a Personnel Structure and Working Relations model, the chapter examines how Sally Potter manages to nurture innovation and experimentalism within these seemingly inflexible structures through ‘collaborative’ and ‘transitional’ auteurism.’Less
This chapter presents a critical examination of the wider context of
the film industry using Ginger & Rosa as a lens through which to examine the three main professional working frameworks that film industry professionals operate within - the network, the department and the project itself, the film.
Drawing on interviews with established film professionals, the chapter examines these three distinctive, yet overlapping spheres, their intersections, their challenges and their moments of contradiction.
The chapter extrapolates the organisational structure as specific to the Ginger & Rosa ‘project’ and examines in detail the structures and working relationships of three different departments–Camera/Electrical, Assistant Director (AD), Production and Post-production.
These discussions draw out the complex interplay between, on the one side, a highly craft-based, traditional classical narrative film production, and, on the other, a production shaped by new digital technologies and interstitial work specific to the film-to-data moment.
Through the mapping of a Personnel Structure and Working Relations model, the chapter examines how Sally Potter manages to nurture innovation and experimentalism within these seemingly inflexible structures through ‘collaborative’ and ‘transitional’ auteurism.’
Tony Garnett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066283
- eISBN:
- 9781781702529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066283.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This is a study about Tony Garnett, forty-year actor, story editor and then producer, within the context of British television, film and Hollywood cinema. This chapter attempts to describe, explicate ...
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This is a study about Tony Garnett, forty-year actor, story editor and then producer, within the context of British television, film and Hollywood cinema. This chapter attempts to describe, explicate and analyse Garnett's work. Garnett has been responsible for a considerable variety of work, including some of the most influential plays and films in British television history. Garnett is one of a small group of television producers who have helped to define what being a television producer is. He is particularly hostile to ‘auteurism’, insisting that drama production is a collective practice, artistically and socially. Auteurism in its crudest form explains the creation of ‘significant’ drama as the product of a single, authorial consciousness. Garnett has worked in a variety of production contexts across the decades, and his role as producer has altered in the process. Garnett's authorial signature is intimately connected to a realist politics and aesthetics, which is still the best way of describing the spine that runs though his work. Realism, with its various qualifiers— social, magical, hyper—and its near-synonyms (notably naturalism), is a much-debated term in cultural criticism.Less
This is a study about Tony Garnett, forty-year actor, story editor and then producer, within the context of British television, film and Hollywood cinema. This chapter attempts to describe, explicate and analyse Garnett's work. Garnett has been responsible for a considerable variety of work, including some of the most influential plays and films in British television history. Garnett is one of a small group of television producers who have helped to define what being a television producer is. He is particularly hostile to ‘auteurism’, insisting that drama production is a collective practice, artistically and socially. Auteurism in its crudest form explains the creation of ‘significant’ drama as the product of a single, authorial consciousness. Garnett has worked in a variety of production contexts across the decades, and his role as producer has altered in the process. Garnett's authorial signature is intimately connected to a realist politics and aesthetics, which is still the best way of describing the spine that runs though his work. Realism, with its various qualifiers— social, magical, hyper—and its near-synonyms (notably naturalism), is a much-debated term in cultural criticism.
Rob Stone
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719072000
- eISBN:
- 9781781701171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719072000.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter presents accounts of several interviews conducted with Julio Medem, who is regarded as the most important and original Spanish filmmaker. Medem was born in San Sebastián, Basque Country, ...
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This chapter presents accounts of several interviews conducted with Julio Medem, who is regarded as the most important and original Spanish filmmaker. Medem was born in San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain and showed an interest in movies since childhood, when he would take his father's Super 8 camera and shoot at night, avoiding everybody's attention. He enjoys a reputation in Basque, Spanish, European and even World cinema for the colourful eroticism, subjective camerawork, elaborate plotting, structural equations, straight-faced absurdity and obsessions with symmetry, duality and chance that characterise the films he has written and directed. The interviews suggest that claims on Medem's auteurism combine appreciation of his subjectivity with an indulgence of his solipsism and a justification of authorial punctuation in the service of emotion, reflection and melancholy, but often separate him from the traditions, legacy, clichés and contemporary context of Spanish, and especially Basque, cinema.Less
This chapter presents accounts of several interviews conducted with Julio Medem, who is regarded as the most important and original Spanish filmmaker. Medem was born in San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain and showed an interest in movies since childhood, when he would take his father's Super 8 camera and shoot at night, avoiding everybody's attention. He enjoys a reputation in Basque, Spanish, European and even World cinema for the colourful eroticism, subjective camerawork, elaborate plotting, structural equations, straight-faced absurdity and obsessions with symmetry, duality and chance that characterise the films he has written and directed. The interviews suggest that claims on Medem's auteurism combine appreciation of his subjectivity with an indulgence of his solipsism and a justification of authorial punctuation in the service of emotion, reflection and melancholy, but often separate him from the traditions, legacy, clichés and contemporary context of Spanish, and especially Basque, cinema.
Linda Ruth Williams
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619009
- eISBN:
- 9780748671168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619009.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Twin Peaks was a pioneering television series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, aired on ABC from April 1990 to June 1991. The oft-repeated adjective ‘quirky’ has become almost a synonym for ...
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Twin Peaks was a pioneering television series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, aired on ABC from April 1990 to June 1991. The oft-repeated adjective ‘quirky’ has become almost a synonym for Twin Peaks, though the series is as genuinely grief- and horror-driven as it is humour-laced. Viewers did not know whether to laugh or cry, but usually did both. Yet Twin Peaks' tears and fears were predicated on its deployment of two of television's most predictable formats: soap opera and the crime/investigative thriller. Often read as the perfect hybrid of Lynch's cinematic strangeness and Frost's respectable televisual pedigree, Twin Peaks posed a series of questions about genre, seriality and auteurism for television studies. It was a mix of tears and sex, investigation and secrets. The series' twin obsessions with weeping and the unknown/unknowable were indicators of genre, and agents in the confusions bound up with the series' format. Twin Peaks first promised the resolutions of an episodic series, but unfolded as an irresolvable continuous serial.Less
Twin Peaks was a pioneering television series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, aired on ABC from April 1990 to June 1991. The oft-repeated adjective ‘quirky’ has become almost a synonym for Twin Peaks, though the series is as genuinely grief- and horror-driven as it is humour-laced. Viewers did not know whether to laugh or cry, but usually did both. Yet Twin Peaks' tears and fears were predicated on its deployment of two of television's most predictable formats: soap opera and the crime/investigative thriller. Often read as the perfect hybrid of Lynch's cinematic strangeness and Frost's respectable televisual pedigree, Twin Peaks posed a series of questions about genre, seriality and auteurism for television studies. It was a mix of tears and sex, investigation and secrets. The series' twin obsessions with weeping and the unknown/unknowable were indicators of genre, and agents in the confusions bound up with the series' format. Twin Peaks first promised the resolutions of an episodic series, but unfolded as an irresolvable continuous serial.
Arved Ashby (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199827336
- eISBN:
- 9780199369560
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827336.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, Western
Music videos widened the creative vocabulary of filmmaking, starting with the launch of MTV in 1981, and continuing through the expansion of cable TV and the proliferation of the PC and of digital ...
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Music videos widened the creative vocabulary of filmmaking, starting with the launch of MTV in 1981, and continuing through the expansion of cable TV and the proliferation of the PC and of digital video. Writers have pointed to the music video's influence in increasing speed of event, as well as deflection away from Aristotelian understandings of narrative, characterization, and storytelling toward a concentration on situation, feeling, mood, and new approaches to time and the passage of time. Just as important is the music video's introduction of different performative sensibilities. Popular Music and the Post-MTV Auteur looks at seven visionary directors, most of them American, who have allowed these music-video-induced changes to infiltrate their feature films: our book defines these filmmakers' relation to the soundtrack as their key authorial gesture. The question is not of the music video influence making films more “musical,” or helping pop songs gain new influence within film conceptions. What these filmmakers have done, demonstrating a fresh kind of cinematic musicality, is write against music rather than against script, and allow pop songs a determining role in narrative and imagery. These directors have allowed preexisting pop songs to open a new cinematic space, between the narrative situation and the music itself. At the most basic level, the music steps away from nondiegetic function and withholds commentary — empathetic commentary, at least — on the narrative. The pop song doesn't mediate in the manner of the nondiegetic orchestral score, but “sides with” the character, or sometimes with the viewer, more impartially than nondiegetic music can. While the classic symphonic film score promised insight directly into a character’s mind, the expanded role of popular music has made more ambiguous the question of when, if ever, we are allowed to see or share a character’s emotions. As a result, the potential for irony and ambiguity has multiplied exponentially, and characterization and narrative capacities have fragmented. At the most basic level, the new cinematic-musical aesthetic has required filmgoers to renegotiate some of their most basic instinctual connections with the human voice and with any sense of a filmmaking self.Less
Music videos widened the creative vocabulary of filmmaking, starting with the launch of MTV in 1981, and continuing through the expansion of cable TV and the proliferation of the PC and of digital video. Writers have pointed to the music video's influence in increasing speed of event, as well as deflection away from Aristotelian understandings of narrative, characterization, and storytelling toward a concentration on situation, feeling, mood, and new approaches to time and the passage of time. Just as important is the music video's introduction of different performative sensibilities. Popular Music and the Post-MTV Auteur looks at seven visionary directors, most of them American, who have allowed these music-video-induced changes to infiltrate their feature films: our book defines these filmmakers' relation to the soundtrack as their key authorial gesture. The question is not of the music video influence making films more “musical,” or helping pop songs gain new influence within film conceptions. What these filmmakers have done, demonstrating a fresh kind of cinematic musicality, is write against music rather than against script, and allow pop songs a determining role in narrative and imagery. These directors have allowed preexisting pop songs to open a new cinematic space, between the narrative situation and the music itself. At the most basic level, the music steps away from nondiegetic function and withholds commentary — empathetic commentary, at least — on the narrative. The pop song doesn't mediate in the manner of the nondiegetic orchestral score, but “sides with” the character, or sometimes with the viewer, more impartially than nondiegetic music can. While the classic symphonic film score promised insight directly into a character’s mind, the expanded role of popular music has made more ambiguous the question of when, if ever, we are allowed to see or share a character’s emotions. As a result, the potential for irony and ambiguity has multiplied exponentially, and characterization and narrative capacities have fragmented. At the most basic level, the new cinematic-musical aesthetic has required filmgoers to renegotiate some of their most basic instinctual connections with the human voice and with any sense of a filmmaking self.
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/9789888139293.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines Wong’s engagement with musical style, considering the functions and effects of music in Chungking Express in particular. It explores Wong’s selection and deployment of highly ...
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This chapter examines Wong’s engagement with musical style, considering the functions and effects of music in Chungking Express in particular. It explores Wong’s selection and deployment of highly eclectic music cues; it outlines his practice of musical scoring and spotting, illuminating the extent to which his musical engagement typifies Hong Kong practice; and it investigates the utility of concepts such as postmodernism, nostalgia, MTV stylistics, hybridity, and Deleuze’s movement-image and time-image in elucidating Wong’s sound tracks. Most broadly, the chapter examines the music track’s relation to character subjectivity, emotional meaning and response (e.g. sentimentality), and audio-visual sensuousness.Less
This chapter examines Wong’s engagement with musical style, considering the functions and effects of music in Chungking Express in particular. It explores Wong’s selection and deployment of highly eclectic music cues; it outlines his practice of musical scoring and spotting, illuminating the extent to which his musical engagement typifies Hong Kong practice; and it investigates the utility of concepts such as postmodernism, nostalgia, MTV stylistics, hybridity, and Deleuze’s movement-image and time-image in elucidating Wong’s sound tracks. Most broadly, the chapter examines the music track’s relation to character subjectivity, emotional meaning and response (e.g. sentimentality), and audio-visual sensuousness.
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474425261
- eISBN:
- 9781474449632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425261.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this ...
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If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this might be particularly so in the case of horror cinema. The analysis of the much-maligned Jennifer’s Body (2009), written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, demonstrates precisely this point. The chapter begins by discussing the marketing of Jennifer’s Body, in order to show how those in charge of film distribution and publicity used the director’s and writer’s gender as a promotional tool, and how the filmmakers themselves might have determined certain feminist and postfeminist readings of their film. These readings are contextualised within Diablo Cody’s broader self-promotional activities and her “commercial auteurism” (Corrigan 1991) and raise several questions about what is at stake when women practitioners make horror films and the implications should a filmmaker self-identify as a feminist filmmaker. The chapter then offers a close examination of Jennifer’s Body by rethinking the theories of Barbara Creed (1993) and Carol J. Clover (1992) and by inscribing the film within the wider context of teen movies and postfeminist media culture, making room for reflection on female spectatorial pleasures. It concludes that rather than undoing the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body explores its productive potential, participating in its continuous re-inscription of the relationship between women and violence.Less
If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this might be particularly so in the case of horror cinema. The analysis of the much-maligned Jennifer’s Body (2009), written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, demonstrates precisely this point. The chapter begins by discussing the marketing of Jennifer’s Body, in order to show how those in charge of film distribution and publicity used the director’s and writer’s gender as a promotional tool, and how the filmmakers themselves might have determined certain feminist and postfeminist readings of their film. These readings are contextualised within Diablo Cody’s broader self-promotional activities and her “commercial auteurism” (Corrigan 1991) and raise several questions about what is at stake when women practitioners make horror films and the implications should a filmmaker self-identify as a feminist filmmaker. The chapter then offers a close examination of Jennifer’s Body by rethinking the theories of Barbara Creed (1993) and Carol J. Clover (1992) and by inscribing the film within the wider context of teen movies and postfeminist media culture, making room for reflection on female spectatorial pleasures. It concludes that rather than undoing the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body explores its productive potential, participating in its continuous re-inscription of the relationship between women and violence.
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474425261
- eISBN:
- 9781474449632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425261.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Sofia Coppola, one of the most visible indie directors in recent years, is clearly embedded in the ‘commerce of auteurism’ (Corrigan 1991), as she actively participates in constructing her public ...
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Sofia Coppola, one of the most visible indie directors in recent years, is clearly embedded in the ‘commerce of auteurism’ (Corrigan 1991), as she actively participates in constructing her public image. Building on existing scholarship on the filmmaker as illustrative of the new critical paradigm in studies of women’s film authorship, the first section of this chapter looks at the promotional and critical discourses surrounding her films to trace the various processes of authentication and de-authentication of Coppola as an auteur (family connections, the privileged position in the American film industry, her filmmaking style marked by a focus on flat affects and the mise-en-scène’s surface details, as well as her interest in postfeminist/neoliberal femininity which has divided critics, especially with her 2013 feature film, The Bling Ring). In the exploration of Coppola’s authorial status, the chapter sheds light on the issue of genre, arguing that her engagement with familiar conventions is far more complex than current analysis of her work has acknowledged. This is particularly evident in the case of Marie Antoinette (2006), a film which has been read variably as a costume drama and/or as a historical biopic. In establishing a dialogical relationship between biopic and costume drama scholarship, the chapter centres on self-conscious devices deployed in Coppola’s film, which are mobilised not against but through a logic of a feminised consumerist culture. The aim is not to reject the supposed ‘feminising’ aspects of the costume drama or to masculinise them in framing the film as a ‘self-conscious’ biopic, but rather to investigate the gender anxieties that underlay the labelling of genres by film criticism.Less
Sofia Coppola, one of the most visible indie directors in recent years, is clearly embedded in the ‘commerce of auteurism’ (Corrigan 1991), as she actively participates in constructing her public image. Building on existing scholarship on the filmmaker as illustrative of the new critical paradigm in studies of women’s film authorship, the first section of this chapter looks at the promotional and critical discourses surrounding her films to trace the various processes of authentication and de-authentication of Coppola as an auteur (family connections, the privileged position in the American film industry, her filmmaking style marked by a focus on flat affects and the mise-en-scène’s surface details, as well as her interest in postfeminist/neoliberal femininity which has divided critics, especially with her 2013 feature film, The Bling Ring). In the exploration of Coppola’s authorial status, the chapter sheds light on the issue of genre, arguing that her engagement with familiar conventions is far more complex than current analysis of her work has acknowledged. This is particularly evident in the case of Marie Antoinette (2006), a film which has been read variably as a costume drama and/or as a historical biopic. In establishing a dialogical relationship between biopic and costume drama scholarship, the chapter centres on self-conscious devices deployed in Coppola’s film, which are mobilised not against but through a logic of a feminised consumerist culture. The aim is not to reject the supposed ‘feminising’ aspects of the costume drama or to masculinise them in framing the film as a ‘self-conscious’ biopic, but rather to investigate the gender anxieties that underlay the labelling of genres by film criticism.
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474425261
- eISBN:
- 9781474449632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425261.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This Afterword summarizes the arguments made throughout the book, underscoring the variety of ways in which women filmmakers draw on generic conventions. It focuses on the benefits of considering the ...
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This Afterword summarizes the arguments made throughout the book, underscoring the variety of ways in which women filmmakers draw on generic conventions. It focuses on the benefits of considering the mode of generic production not as an obstacle, but as a resource for creative imagining. It highlights that the constructed opposition between women’s culture and men’s culture has a profound impact on critical reception and discursive circulation of films, and details several critical strategies employed to make sense of particular examples of women’s cinema. The central argument is that the discourses around “exceptionality” (and in some cases “masculinity”) that surround women filmmakers tend to marginalize their genre film production as a rare anomaly and obscure other possible dimensions of their films: the popularity among a wide range of audiences, engagement with feminism filtered through the generic, intertextual connections with other women’s work, to give only some examples. Rather than being rare examples of a subversive ‘counter-cinema’, all of the films under discussion show the potential advantages of conceptualising women’s cinema as genre cinema – understood as a ‘constellation’ of cultural, aesthetic and ideological materials – which facilitates a more inclusive range of possibilities than those allowed by the traditional auteurist readings.Less
This Afterword summarizes the arguments made throughout the book, underscoring the variety of ways in which women filmmakers draw on generic conventions. It focuses on the benefits of considering the mode of generic production not as an obstacle, but as a resource for creative imagining. It highlights that the constructed opposition between women’s culture and men’s culture has a profound impact on critical reception and discursive circulation of films, and details several critical strategies employed to make sense of particular examples of women’s cinema. The central argument is that the discourses around “exceptionality” (and in some cases “masculinity”) that surround women filmmakers tend to marginalize their genre film production as a rare anomaly and obscure other possible dimensions of their films: the popularity among a wide range of audiences, engagement with feminism filtered through the generic, intertextual connections with other women’s work, to give only some examples. Rather than being rare examples of a subversive ‘counter-cinema’, all of the films under discussion show the potential advantages of conceptualising women’s cinema as genre cinema – understood as a ‘constellation’ of cultural, aesthetic and ideological materials – which facilitates a more inclusive range of possibilities than those allowed by the traditional auteurist readings.
Virginia Wright Wexman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474406550
- eISBN:
- 9781474416146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474406550.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter conducts a reading of Preston Sturges’s 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels that focuses on its discourses about film authorship. While the auteurism that drives much film criticism today ...
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This chapter conducts a reading of Preston Sturges’s 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels that focuses on its discourses about film authorship. While the auteurism that drives much film criticism today routinely approaches directors as authors, in 1941 the case for directors had yet to be made in unequivocal terms. Drawing on archival materials housed at UCLA, including unproduced scripts and correspondence, the chapter argues that Sturges used the vehicle of Sullivan’s Travels to argue that neither producers nor stars like Veronica Lake can be taken seriously as authors. However, the film remains ambivalent about the rival claims to authorship mounted by screenwriters and directors. The reasons that lay behind this ambivalence arose from Sturges’s belief that, while screenwriters were the most important authors, directors were the ones who held the power in Hollywood.Less
This chapter conducts a reading of Preston Sturges’s 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels that focuses on its discourses about film authorship. While the auteurism that drives much film criticism today routinely approaches directors as authors, in 1941 the case for directors had yet to be made in unequivocal terms. Drawing on archival materials housed at UCLA, including unproduced scripts and correspondence, the chapter argues that Sturges used the vehicle of Sullivan’s Travels to argue that neither producers nor stars like Veronica Lake can be taken seriously as authors. However, the film remains ambivalent about the rival claims to authorship mounted by screenwriters and directors. The reasons that lay behind this ambivalence arose from Sturges’s belief that, while screenwriters were the most important authors, directors were the ones who held the power in Hollywood.
Sarah Kozloff
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474406550
- eISBN:
- 9781474416146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474406550.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter compares three Sturges-authored films, The Good Fairy (Wyler, 1935), Easy Living (Leisen, 1937) and Remember the Night (Leisen, 1940), against Sturges’s scripts. Sturges, who started in ...
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This chapter compares three Sturges-authored films, The Good Fairy (Wyler, 1935), Easy Living (Leisen, 1937) and Remember the Night (Leisen, 1940), against Sturges’s scripts. Sturges, who started in Hollywood as a script doctor and scriptwriter, complained bitterly about how other directors treated his screenplays. Yet this chapter argues that adaptations made by the directors and the studios generally improved upon his original vision, sometimes by heightening the comedy, but mostly by intensifying viewer connection to characters and emphasizing the romance. Sometimes the studio system, which kept auteurism in check, worked to a film’s advantage.Less
This chapter compares three Sturges-authored films, The Good Fairy (Wyler, 1935), Easy Living (Leisen, 1937) and Remember the Night (Leisen, 1940), against Sturges’s scripts. Sturges, who started in Hollywood as a script doctor and scriptwriter, complained bitterly about how other directors treated his screenplays. Yet this chapter argues that adaptations made by the directors and the studios generally improved upon his original vision, sometimes by heightening the comedy, but mostly by intensifying viewer connection to characters and emphasizing the romance. Sometimes the studio system, which kept auteurism in check, worked to a film’s advantage.
Sarah Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748693580
- eISBN:
- 9781474444668
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693580.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter closes the book with a look back at 2012 through the contemporary moment of 2017 reflecting upon recent changes and innovations in the film industry. Five years on from the temporal ...
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This chapter closes the book with a look back at 2012 through the contemporary moment of 2017 reflecting upon recent changes and innovations in the film industry. Five years on from the temporal origin of the book’s focus of study, the film industry and film production has continued to be impacted by digital interventions in innumerable ways. Since 2012, new creative and logistical responses to technological innovations have proliferated, resulting in new types of film production and new exhibition practices.
This chapter summarises the key concepts of the book - Production Aesthetic; collaborative auteurism; transitional auteurship; and workflow-warp and weft.
The chapter looks forwards to the future of digital film studies–approaches and methods through a summary of the analytical framework developed within the book: through the unification and cross-analyses of the tripartite of text, production aesthetics and representational text(s) and their subsequent mobilization and dissemination.Less
This chapter closes the book with a look back at 2012 through the contemporary moment of 2017 reflecting upon recent changes and innovations in the film industry. Five years on from the temporal origin of the book’s focus of study, the film industry and film production has continued to be impacted by digital interventions in innumerable ways. Since 2012, new creative and logistical responses to technological innovations have proliferated, resulting in new types of film production and new exhibition practices.
This chapter summarises the key concepts of the book - Production Aesthetic; collaborative auteurism; transitional auteurship; and workflow-warp and weft.
The chapter looks forwards to the future of digital film studies–approaches and methods through a summary of the analytical framework developed within the book: through the unification and cross-analyses of the tripartite of text, production aesthetics and representational text(s) and their subsequent mobilization and dissemination.
James Chandler
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226034959
- eISBN:
- 9780226035000
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226035000.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter discusses the films of Frank Capra, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946); how Capra appeared to realize the long-term significance of television ...
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This chapter discusses the films of Frank Capra, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946); how Capra appeared to realize the long-term significance of television sooner than many directors of his generation; the preoccupation with the Capraesque in the cinema of the 1990s; the publication in 1971 of Capra's autobiography, The Name above the Title; and the link between Capra's claim to auteurism and the issue of his sentimentality.Less
This chapter discusses the films of Frank Capra, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946); how Capra appeared to realize the long-term significance of television sooner than many directors of his generation; the preoccupation with the Capraesque in the cinema of the 1990s; the publication in 1971 of Capra's autobiography, The Name above the Title; and the link between Capra's claim to auteurism and the issue of his sentimentality.
David Looseley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382578
- eISBN:
- 9781786945280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382578.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The chapter explores why, although she wrote many songs, she was never accepted as primarily an auteur-compositeur-interprète: the singer-songwriter figure who became so revered in France from the ...
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The chapter explores why, although she wrote many songs, she was never accepted as primarily an auteur-compositeur-interprète: the singer-songwriter figure who became so revered in France from the 1960s Her work during the late 1940s and 1950s moved steadily towards a version of auteurism and artistic authenticity. Yet she would never entirely shrug off the brash populism associated with music hall, which was turning into the mass commercial culture of the 1950s. Her position in this binary divide was altered by her success in New York in 1947-48. In America, the cultural baggage she had studiously assembled in France was recontextualised and reappropriated and she returned to France not so much Americanised as transfigured: an icon of a certain idea of Frenchness and international stardom.Less
The chapter explores why, although she wrote many songs, she was never accepted as primarily an auteur-compositeur-interprète: the singer-songwriter figure who became so revered in France from the 1960s Her work during the late 1940s and 1950s moved steadily towards a version of auteurism and artistic authenticity. Yet she would never entirely shrug off the brash populism associated with music hall, which was turning into the mass commercial culture of the 1950s. Her position in this binary divide was altered by her success in New York in 1947-48. In America, the cultural baggage she had studiously assembled in France was recontextualised and reappropriated and she returned to France not so much Americanised as transfigured: an icon of a certain idea of Frenchness and international stardom.
Julie A. Turnock
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231163538
- eISBN:
- 9780231535274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231163538.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines auteurism and special effects-driven blockbuster filmmaking. Auteurism, an approach to mid-century filmmaking in which a film reflects the director's personal creative vision, ...
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This chapter examines auteurism and special effects-driven blockbuster filmmaking. Auteurism, an approach to mid-century filmmaking in which a film reflects the director's personal creative vision, was initiated by French critics and filmmakers such as André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, François Truffault and Jean-Luc Godard. George Lucas's and Steven Spielberg's investment in visual filmmaking and graphic dynamics places them among the critically embraced auteurs of the New Hollywood generation, including Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, and Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas's and Spielberg's 1977 films, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, transformed the parameters of cinematic diegesis in portraying intricately realized fantasy environments rather than fictional settings that simply stage a fantasy narrative. The success of these films initiated a shift toward more special effects-driven filmmaking and had economic outgrowth well beyond the effects business.Less
This chapter examines auteurism and special effects-driven blockbuster filmmaking. Auteurism, an approach to mid-century filmmaking in which a film reflects the director's personal creative vision, was initiated by French critics and filmmakers such as André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, François Truffault and Jean-Luc Godard. George Lucas's and Steven Spielberg's investment in visual filmmaking and graphic dynamics places them among the critically embraced auteurs of the New Hollywood generation, including Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, and Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas's and Spielberg's 1977 films, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, transformed the parameters of cinematic diegesis in portraying intricately realized fantasy environments rather than fictional settings that simply stage a fantasy narrative. The success of these films initiated a shift toward more special effects-driven filmmaking and had economic outgrowth well beyond the effects business.
Delphine Bénézet
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169752
- eISBN:
- 9780231850612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169752.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter continues to look into the specificity of Agnès Varda's films within its historical context and also uses a revisionist perspective concerning hardcore auteurism. It revisits the idea of ...
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This chapter continues to look into the specificity of Agnès Varda's films within its historical context and also uses a revisionist perspective concerning hardcore auteurism. It revisits the idea of the filmmaker as the all-mighty single auteur of her films by focusing on the collaborative nature of filmmaking, by reassessing the role of other contributors like the editor and the composer, and by looking at Varda's own performances of authorship. Taking La Pointe Courte and Agnès de ci de là Varda as examples, this chapter aims to reconsider some of the filmmaker's preoccupations across time and to evaluate what sort of contribution other artists and collaborators have made to Varda's cinema. This in-depth analysis shows how each of these projects is the result of a complex amalgam of efforts, encounters and influences.Less
This chapter continues to look into the specificity of Agnès Varda's films within its historical context and also uses a revisionist perspective concerning hardcore auteurism. It revisits the idea of the filmmaker as the all-mighty single auteur of her films by focusing on the collaborative nature of filmmaking, by reassessing the role of other contributors like the editor and the composer, and by looking at Varda's own performances of authorship. Taking La Pointe Courte and Agnès de ci de là Varda as examples, this chapter aims to reconsider some of the filmmaker's preoccupations across time and to evaluate what sort of contribution other artists and collaborators have made to Varda's cinema. This in-depth analysis shows how each of these projects is the result of a complex amalgam of efforts, encounters and influences.
Kyle Stevens
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199375806
- eISBN:
- 9780199375844
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199375806.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The conclusion considers Nichols in relation to New Hollywood, its ties to previous eras, and whether its aspirations ended around 1976, as alleged, or were absorbed into the later work of Nichols ...
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The conclusion considers Nichols in relation to New Hollywood, its ties to previous eras, and whether its aspirations ended around 1976, as alleged, or were absorbed into the later work of Nichols and others. The chapter traces the theoretical opposition of auteurism and psychological realism. While, in America, second-wave feminism shed light on issues of embodiment and sexual freedom, and challenged patriarchal traditions that oppose emotional and rational expression, European critics diminished the value of on-screen psychological expression. Appreciating the differences between European and American political contexts during the theoretical invention of auteurism affects our understanding of what has counted as aesthetically estimable film style. Through a comparison of two war films—Catch-22 and Charlie Wilson’s War—the chapter espouses a notion of auteurism that can house filmmakers who develop mutable signatures (especially humorous ones) in order to intervene in urgent social and political issues over time.Less
The conclusion considers Nichols in relation to New Hollywood, its ties to previous eras, and whether its aspirations ended around 1976, as alleged, or were absorbed into the later work of Nichols and others. The chapter traces the theoretical opposition of auteurism and psychological realism. While, in America, second-wave feminism shed light on issues of embodiment and sexual freedom, and challenged patriarchal traditions that oppose emotional and rational expression, European critics diminished the value of on-screen psychological expression. Appreciating the differences between European and American political contexts during the theoretical invention of auteurism affects our understanding of what has counted as aesthetically estimable film style. Through a comparison of two war films—Catch-22 and Charlie Wilson’s War—the chapter espouses a notion of auteurism that can house filmmakers who develop mutable signatures (especially humorous ones) in order to intervene in urgent social and political issues over time.
