King Vidor in Focus

King Vidor in Focus
Author: Kevin L. Stoehr
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2024-08-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476670099

King Vidor (1894-1982) had the longest career of any Hollywood director, and his works include some of the most dramatic, sublime moments in the history of American cinema. Regarded by many film historians as one of the greatest of silent era filmmakers--especially for masterworks The Big Parade, The Crowd, and Show People--Vidor is nonetheless one of the most underrated of Hollywood's "old masters" in terms of his overall career. His sound era films include Hallelujah, Street Scene, The Champ, The Stranger's Return, Our Daily Bread, Stella Dallas, The Citadel, Northwest Passage, Duel in the Sun, Beyond the Forest, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and War and Peace. He also helped to establish the Screen Directors Guild and served as its first president. This book charts the ways in which Vidor's vast, complex body of work ranges over diverse genres and styles while also expressing his recurring personal interests in spirituality (especially Christian Science), aesthetics, metaphysics, social realism, and the myth of America. The first book since 1988 to give a comprehensive view of Vidor's career, it discusses his artistic evolution in a way that appeals to the general reader as well as to the film scholar.

Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination

Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination
Author: Geoff Mayer
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2021-12-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476643075

Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific values embedded in notions of good and evil are determined by the culture, and they shift from nation to nation, region to region, and period to period. This book explores the "populist" westerns of the 1930s, the propaganda films that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the popularity of Sax Rohmer's master villain Fu Manchu. "Melodramas of passion" and film noir also offer a challenge to melodrama with its seemingly alienated protagonists and downbeat endings. Yet, with few exceptions, Hollywood was able to assimilate these genres within its melodramatic imagination.

King Vidor, American

King Vidor, American
Author: Raymond E. Durgnat
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 856
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0520330048

The Girl

The Girl
Author: Michelle Morgan
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0762490608

With an in-depth look at the two most empowering years in the life of Marilyn Monroe, The Girl details how The Seven Year Itch created an icon and sent the star on an adventure of self-discovery and transformation from a controlled wife and contract player into a businesswoman and unlikely feminist whose power is still felt today. When Marilyn Monroe stepped over a subway grating as The Girl in The Seven Year Itch and let a gust of wind catch the skirt of her pleated white dress, an icon was born. Before that, the actress was mainly known for a nude calendar and one-dimensional, albeit memorable, characters on the screen. Though she again played a "dumb blonde" in this film and was making headlines by revealing her enviable anatomy, the star was now every bit in control of her image, and ready for a personal revolution. Emboldened by her winning fight to land the role of The Girl, the making of The Seven Year Itch and the eighteen months that followed was the period of greatest confidence, liberation, and career success that Monroe lived in her tumultuous life. It was a time in which, among other things, she: Ended her marriage to Joe DiMaggio and later began a relationship with Arthur Miller; Legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, divorcing herself from the troubled past of Norma Jeane; Started her own production company; Studied in private lessons with Lee and Paula Strasberg of the Actors Studio and became a part of the acting revolution of the day The ripple effects her personal rebellion had on Hollywood, and in trailblazing the way for women that followed, will both surprise and inspire readers to see the Marilyn Monroe in an entirely new light.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
Author: Martin Scorsese
Publisher:
Total Pages: 191
Release: 1997
Genre: Motion picture producers and directors
ISBN: 9780571192427

This account of American films is balanced between subjective enthusiasm and objective analysis. Scorsese starts from his own childhood love affair with the cinema, when he discovered King Vidor's Dual in the Sun as a boy.

Ride, Boldly Ride

Ride, Boldly Ride
Author: Mary Lea Bandy
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2012-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520258665

"This book is a survey of the movie Western that covers its history from the early silent era to recent spins on the genre in films such as No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, True Grit, and Cowboys & Aliens. The authors provide fresh perspectives on landmark films such Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Wild Bunch, and they also pay tribute to many underappreciated Westerns including 3 Bad Men, The Wind, The Big Trail, Ruggles of Red Gap, Northwest Passage, The Westerner, The Furies, Jubal, and Comanche Station. The book explores major phases of the Western's development--silent era oaters, A-production classics of the 1930s and early 1940s, and the more psychologically complex presentations of the Westerner that emerged in the post-World War II period.. They examine various forms of genre-revival and genre-revisionism that have recurred over the past half-century, culminating especially in the masterworks of Clint Eastwood. Central themes of the book include the inner life of the Western hero, the importance of the natural landscape, the tension between myth and history, the depiction of the Native American, and the juxtaposing of comedy and tragedy"--Provided by publisher.

A Tree is a Tree

A Tree is a Tree
Author: King Vidor
Publisher: Samuel French , Incorporated
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Follows King Vidor from his childhood, his move to Hollywood, the building of his studio, and his time at MGM.

The Problem Body

The Problem Body
Author: Sally Chivers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2010
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

In The Problem Body, editors Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic bring together the work of eleven of the best disability scholars from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and South Korea to explore a new approach to the study of film by concentrating on cinematic representations of what they term "the problem body." The book is a much-needed exploration of the projection of disability on film combined with a much-needed rethinking of hierarchies of difference. The editors turned to the existing corpus of disability theory with its impressive insights about the social and cultural mediation of disabled bodies. They then sought, from scholars at every stage of their careers, new ideas about how disabled bodies coexist with a range of other bodies (gendered, queered, racialized, classed, etc.). To call into question why certain bodies invite the label "problem" more frequently than other bodies, the contributors draw on scholarship from feminist, race, queer, cultural studies, disability, and film studies arenas. In Chivers and Markotic's introduction, they draw on disability theory and a range of cinematic examples to explain the term "problem body" in relation to its projection. In explorations of film noir, illness narratives, classical Hollywood film, and French film, the essays reveal the "problem body" as a multiplication of lived circumstances constructed both physically and socially.

The Mass Ornament

The Mass Ornament
Author: Siegfried Kracauer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1995
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780674551633

The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary writings continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.

Guts and Glory

Guts and Glory
Author: Lawrence H. Suid
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 770
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813158087

Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film is the definitive study of the symbiotic relationship between the film industry and the United States armed services. Since the first edition was published nearly two decades ago, the nation has experienced several wars, both on the battlefield and in movie theatres and living rooms at home. Now, author Lawrence Suid has extensively revised and expanded his classic history of the mutual exploitation of the film industry and the military, exploring how Hollywood has reflected and effected changes in America's image of its armed services. He offers in-depth looks at such classic films as Wings, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Longest Day, Patton, Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Saving Private Ryan, as well as the controversial war movies The Green Berets, M*A*S*H, the Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July.