Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema PDF Author: James MacDowell
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748680187
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"e;Hollywood 'happy ending' has long been considered among the most famous and standardised features in the whole of narrative filmmaking. Yet, while ceaselessly invoked, this notorious device has received barely any detailed attention from the field of film studies. This book is thus the first in-depth examination of one of the most overused and under-analysed concepts in discussions of popular cinema. What exactly is the 'happy ending'? Is it simply a cliche, as commonly supposed? Why has it earned such an unenviable reputation? What does it, or can it, mean? Concentrating especially on conclusions featuring an ultimate romantic union - the final couple - this wide-ranging investigation probes traditional associations between the 'happy ending' and homogeneity, closure, 'unrealism', and ideological conservatism, testing widespread assumptions against the evidence offered by a range of classical and contemporary films. "e;

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema PDF Author: James MacDowell
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748680187
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
"e;Hollywood 'happy ending' has long been considered among the most famous and standardised features in the whole of narrative filmmaking. Yet, while ceaselessly invoked, this notorious device has received barely any detailed attention from the field of film studies. This book is thus the first in-depth examination of one of the most overused and under-analysed concepts in discussions of popular cinema. What exactly is the 'happy ending'? Is it simply a cliche, as commonly supposed? Why has it earned such an unenviable reputation? What does it, or can it, mean? Concentrating especially on conclusions featuring an ultimate romantic union - the final couple - this wide-ranging investigation probes traditional associations between the 'happy ending' and homogeneity, closure, 'unrealism', and ideological conservatism, testing widespread assumptions against the evidence offered by a range of classical and contemporary films. "e;

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema PDF Author: James MacDowell
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748680209
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This wide-ranging investigation probes traditional associations between the 'happy ending' and homogeneity, closure, 'unrealism', and ideological conservatism, testing widespread assumptions against the evidence offered by a range of classical and contemp

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema

Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema PDF Author: James MacDowell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780748693825
Category : PERFORMING ARTS
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This wide-ranging investigation probes traditional associations between the 'happy ending' and homogeneity, closure, 'unrealism' and ideological conservatism, testing widespread assumptions against the evidence offered by a range of classical and contemporary films.

The End

The End PDF Author: Richard John Neupert
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814325254
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Given the importance that spectators grant to the final moments of a motion picture, it is surprising to find so little written on how films end and how audiences interpret those closing moments. This study investigates endings in film and the lively role they play in how and why viewers make sense of movies. Relying upon contemporary literary criticism and film theory, the author analyses narrative strategies in films ranging from the classical Hollywood motion picture to the more modern European art cinema. To assist readers in understanding the various functions of endings, the films are divided into four critical categories: the "Closed Text" film, typical of classical works; the "Open Story" films; the "Open Discourse" film; and the "Open Text" film which struggles to defy story resolution. Detailed textual analysis of sample films reveal how all of the devices of filmic narration - from "mise-en-scene" to soundtracks - direct a viewer's perception, comprehension and interpretation of closure in films. Among the sample films that are featured as test cases for studying endings are "The Quiet Man" (Ford, 1950), "The 400 Blows" (Truffaut, 1959), "Weekend" (Godard, 1967), "Tout va bien" (Godard, 1972), and "Earth" (Dovzhenko, 1930). To round out his informative study of endings in films, Neupert also examines a host of diverse titles, including "Do the Right Thing" (Lee, 1989), "Open City" (Rossellini, 1945) and "The Graduate" (Nichols, 1967).

Hollywood Aesthetic

Hollywood Aesthetic PDF Author: Todd Berliner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190658746
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
"Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among huge populations, translate into box office success. With that goal in mind, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a massive scale. In Hollywood Aesthetic, Todd Berliner accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. Analyzing Hollywood in the areas of narrative, style, ideology, and genre, Hollywood Aesthetic offers a comprehensive appraisal of the aesthetic design of American commercial cinema. "--Publisher's description.

Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing

Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing PDF Author: Jared Sexton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319661701
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This book offers a critical survey of film and media representations of black masculinity in the early twenty-first-century United States, between President George W. Bush’s 2001 announcement of the War on Terror and President Barack Obama’s 2009 acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. It argues that images of black masculine authority have become increasingly important to the legitimization of contemporary policing and its leading role in the maintenance of an antiblack social order forged by racial slavery and segregation. It examines a constellation of film and television productions—from Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day to John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side to Barry Jenkin's Moonlight—to illuminate the contradictory dynamics at work in attempts to reconcile the promotion of black male patriarchal empowerment and the preservation of gendered antiblackness within political and popular culture.

When the Movies Mattered

When the Movies Mattered PDF Author: Jonathan Kirshner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501736116
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
In When the Movies Mattered Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis gather a remarkable collection of authors to revisit the unique era in American cinema that was New Hollywood. Ten eminent contributors, some of whom wrote about the New Hollywood movement as it unfolded across the 1960s and 1970s, assess the convergence of film-industry developments and momentous social and political changes that created a new type of commercial film that reflected those revolutionary influences in American life. Even as New Hollywood first took shape, film industry insiders and commentators alike realized its significance. At the time, Pauline Kael compared the New Hollywood to the "tangled, bitter flowering of American letters in the 1850s" and David Thomson dubbed the era "the decade when movies mattered." Thomson's words provide the impetus for this volume in which a cohort of seasoned film critics and scholars who came of age watching the movies of this era reflect upon and reconsider this golden age in American filmmaking. Contributors: Molly Haskell, Heather Hendershot, J. Hoberman, George Kouvaros, Phillip Lopate, Robert Pippin, David Sterritt, David Thomson

The Cinema of Terry Gilliam

The Cinema of Terry Gilliam PDF Author: Jeff Birkenstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231165358
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Terry Gilliam has been making movies for more than forty years, and this volume analyses a selection of his thrilling directorial work, from his early films with Monty Python to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus (2009). This collection argues that when Gilliam makes a movie, he goes to war: against Hollywood caution and convention.

Charles Walters

Charles Walters PDF Author: Brent Phillips
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813147239
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From the trolley scene in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's last dance on the silver screen ( The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949) to Judy Garland's timeless, tuxedo-clad performance of "Get Happy" ( Summer Stock, 1950), Charles Walters staged the iconic musical sequences of Hollywood's golden age. During his career, this Academy Award--nominated director and choreographer showcased the talents of stars such as Gene Kelly, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and Frank Sinatra. However, despite his many critical and commercial triumphs, Walters's name often goes unrecognized today. In the first full-length biography of Walters, Brent Phillips chronicles the artist's career, from his days as a featured Broadway performer and protégé of theater legend Robert Alton to his successes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He takes readers behind the scenes of many of the studio's most beloved musicals, including Easter Parade (1948), Lili (1953), High Society (1956), and T he Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). In addition, Phillips recounts Walters's associations with Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, and Gloria Swanson, examines the director's uncredited work on several films, including the blockbuster Gigi (1958), and discusses his contributions to musical theater and American popular culture. This revealing book also considers Walters's personal life and explores how he navigated the industry as an openly gay man. Drawing on unpublished oral histories, correspondence, and new interviews, this biography offers an entertaining and important new look at an exciting era in Hollywood history.

Troubling Masculinities

Troubling Masculinities PDF Author: Glen Donnar
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496828593
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Troubling Masculinities: Terror, Gender, and Monstrous Others in American Film Post-9/11 is the first multigenre study of representations of masculinity following the emergence of violent terror as a plot element in American cinema after September 11, 2001. Across a broad range of subgenres—including disaster melodrama, monster movies, postapocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and home invasion horror, action-thrillers, and frontier westerns—author Glen Donnar examines the impact of “terror-Others,” from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, especially in relation to cinematic representations in earlier periods of national turmoil. Donnar demonstrates that the reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Taking up critical arguments about Hollywood’s attempts to resolve male crisis through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this failure reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they are supposed to be fighting. Donnar concludes that interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nationhood continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, the volume offers an important counternarrative to this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.