Performing Arts : Film

Charm is a useful byword for the career of Billy Wilder. His films often explore the charm of innocence and the charm of corruption, or to put it more precisely, the charm of corruption for the innocent and the charm of innocence for the corrupt. The director does not regard cloistered virtue as being very photogenic, but tainted virtue is another thing entirely. In his most serious dramas, characters who have compromised and corrupted themselves in tragic ways—like Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard and Chuck Tatum in Ace In The Hole—undertake too late to reclaim their integrity. In his comedies, characters whose desires are represented by the corruptions of worldly compromise and easy comfort—like Bud Baxter in The Apartment, Harry Hinkle in The Fortune Cookie, John Pringle in A Foreign Affair—relinquish their spoils and return gladly, if a bit stained, to the integrity they previously had no use for. Virtue becomes its own, more appreciated reward and vice its own punishment. Since the 1930s, Wilder’s cinematic charm has been making audiences accept some unconventional truths and root for some unlikely heroes. Perhaps Fred MacMurray also sensed that Wilder is one of Hollywood’s anti-Disneys. A Wilder project, redeemed though it was by the charm of its writing and direction, nonetheless often addressed a subject in a way that offended the keepers of the status quo. This, of course, may simply be another way of saying that Wilder puts his directorial charms and exploration of innocence and corruption to the service of a realist’s vision while Disney prefers the eye of fantasy. The realist is usually the one whose work elicits the sharp intake of breath from the audience when they sense that things may not be the way they appear on the surface. As Wilder’s character Barry Detweiler, a Hollywood producer, says in Fedora: “Sugar and spice, and underneath that—cement and stainless steel.” It’s a bracing recipe, one that usually allows Wilder to ad more...

Price: $5.99

In this updated edition of his acclaimed and award-winning study, Stephen Bourne takes a personal look at the history of black people in popular British film and television. He documents, from original research and interviews, the experiences and representations which have been ignored in previous media books about people of African descent. There are chapters about Paul Robeson, Newton I. Aduaka, soap operas and much more - as well as several useful appendices and suggestions for further reading. more...

Price: $150.00

Argues that it was the human form in motion that most profoundly shaped early cinema. Situating his discussion in a political and historical context, the author begins his analysis with films that reveal striking anxieties and preoccupations about persons on public display. It also considers twentieth-century American incarnation of cinema itself. more...

Price: $19.96

Filmmaker and film scholar Tejaswini Ganti provides a guide to the cultural, social and political significance of Hindi cinema, outlining the history and structure of the Bombay film industry, and its impact on global popular culture. more...

Price: $29.95

The first broad-ranging collection on Deleuze’s essential works on cinema. In the nearly twenty years since their publication, Gilles Deleuze’s books about cinema have proven as daunting as they are enticing—a new aesthetics of film, one equally at home with Henri Bergson and Wim Wenders, Friedrich Nietzsche and Orson Welles, that also takes its place in the philosopher’s immense and difficult oeuvre. With this collection, the first to focus solely and extensively on Deleuze’s cinematic work, the nature and reach of that work finally become clear. Composed of a substantial introduction, twelve original essays produced for this volume, and a new English translation of a personal, intriguing, and little-known interview with Deleuze on his cinema books, The Brain Is the Screen is a sustained engagement with Deleuze’s cinematic philosophy that leads to a new view of the larger confrontation of philosophy with cinematic images.Contributors: Éric Alliez, Dudley Andrew, Peter Canning, Tom Conley, András Bálint Kovács, Gregg Lambert, Laura U. Marks, Jean-Clet Martin, Angelo Restivo, Martin Schwab, and François Zourabichvili. more...

Price: $70.50