Mamoulian

Mamoulian PDF Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813136865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Mamoulian

Mamoulian PDF Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813136865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description
An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Porgy

Porgy PDF Author: Dorothy Heyward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American men
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description


ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher

ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher PDF Author: Gary D Rhodes
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474419046
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
One of the most important yet overlooked of Hollywood auteurs, Budd Boetticher was responsible for a number of classic films, including his famous 'Ranown' series of westerns starring Randolph Scott. With influential figures like Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood acknowledging Boetticher's influence, and with growing academic interest in his work, Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer present a vital collection of essays on the director's long career, from a range of international scholars. Looking at celebrated films like Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) and Comanche Station (1960), as well as at lesser-known works like Escape in the Fog (1945) and Behind Locked Doors (1948), this book also addresses Boetticher's influential television work on the James Garner series Maverick, and Boetticher's continuing aesthetic influence on contemporary TV classics like Breaking Bad.

Reinventing Reality

Reinventing Reality PDF Author: Mark Spergel
Publisher: Scarecrow Filmmakers Series
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Theatre and film director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987) is known chiefly as a technical innovator and stylist. His stage credits include the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (1935), and Oklahoma (1943); his sixteen completed films include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Golden Boy (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and Silk Stockings (1957). In the theatre, Mamoulian integrated the various contributory arts of the American musical, transforming the near variety-show format of musicals into a dramatic unity of plot, character, music, and dance. He thus opened the stage to what would later be termed the "golden age" of the American book musical of the 1950s and 60s. In early sound films, Mamoulian restored mobility to the camera, rediscovered montage, redefined close-ups, split-screen, and dissolves, invented the voice-over, and was first to use multitrack sound recording. He directed the first live-action Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935). Spergel introduces previously undisclosed personal documents about the Mamoulian that necessitate a re-examination of Mamoulian's own statements about his life. He shows that the central theme in Mamoulian's art and life, as he describes it--to overcome the world and embrace truth--extended to the telling of his own history. Mamoulian believed he could alter that history through stylized presentation, idealizing the truth, and thereby raising numerous questions about historiography in general.

Porgy

Porgy PDF Author: DuBose Heyward
Publisher: Bibliotech Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Basis for light opera Porgy and Bess. Story of crippled Negro beggar and his friends and enemies in Charleston, S.C.

Film/Genre

Film/Genre PDF Author: Rick Altman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838715797
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Film/Genre revises our notions of film genre and connects the roles played by industry critics and audiences in making and re-making genre. Altman reveals the conflicting stakes for which the genre game has been played and recognises that the term 'genre' has different meanings for different groups, basing his new genre theory on the uneasy competitive yet complimentary relationship among genre users and discussing a huge range of films from The Great Train Robbery to Star Wars and from The Jazz Singer to The Player.

"On My Way": The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess

Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393240134
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A former New York Times music critic and award-winning author describes the contributions of the stage and film master director to Gershwin's classic American folk opera that originally premiered in 1935.

The Camera Lies

The Camera Lies PDF Author: Dan Callahan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197515320
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actors Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting -- both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career -- Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers

Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers PDF Author: Jonathan J. Cavallero
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025203614X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
"[This book] explores the different ways in which Italian American directors from the 1920s to the present have responded to their ethnicity. While some directors have used film to declare their ethnic roots and create an Italian American 'imagined community,' others have ignored or even denied their background . . . Cavallero's exploration of the films of Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola,and Tarantino demonstrates how immigrant Italians fought prejudice, how later generations positioned themselves in relation to their predecessors, and how the American cinema, usually seen as a cultural instituion that works to assimlate, has also served as a forum where assimilation was resisted." -- Book cover.

Defining Cinema

Defining Cinema PDF Author: Michael Slowik
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197511251
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"In an industry where top-tier talent like John Ford, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock took some time to reach what many consider to be their most mature and celebrated period of filmmaking, Mamoulian is notable among studio-era Hollywood directors for "finding" his style and offering it nearly full blown upon his first feature-film outing. With the exception of Orson Welles, it would be difficult to name another studio-era director who burst so strikingly onto the film scene with an approach that seemed to redefine stylistic expectations. Certainly temperament helped-Mamoulian was ambitious, confident, and eager to follow his artistic instincts. Mamoulian was also fortunate to begin his career at Paramount, a studio known for giving its directors more autonomy than the norm, at the precise moment when the arrival of sound film threw the parameters and definition of cinema into question. But equally important, Mamoulian was able to announce himself as a filmmaker with such daring and assurance in Applause (1929) because he had spent the previous half-dozen years thinking deeply about art and how it should be used"--