Download or read book Refocusing Chaplin written by Lawrence Howe and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely recognized in his character of the Tramp, Charlie Chaplin transcended the role of actor to become screenwriter, director, composer, producer, and finally studio head. The subject of numerous biographical studies, Chaplin has been examined as both myth and man, but these treatments fail to adequately address the often-overlooked complexity of his filmmaking. Refocusing Chaplin: A Screen Icon through Critical Lenses features essays that examine the actor and director through various theoretical perspectives—including Marxism, feminism, gender studies, deconstruction, psychoanalytic criticism, new historicism, performance studies, and cultural criticism. Complementing this range of intellectual inquiry is the wide reach of films discussed, from The Circus (1928), The Gold Rush (1925), and City Lights (1931) to Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and Limelight (1952). Shorter films, such as “The Pawnshop” (1916), “The Rink” (1916), and “A Dog’s Life” (1918) are also examined. These essays analyze the tensions between the carefully constructed worlds of Chaplin’s films and their cultural contexts. The varied approaches and range of materials in this volume not only comprehensively assess the screen icon but also foster a conversation that exemplifies the best of intellectual exchange. Refocusing Chaplin provides a unique view into the work of one of cinema’s most important and influential artists.
Download or read book Charlie Chaplin written by John W. Fawell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlie Chaplin was a skilled comedian, filmmaker and composer, and the mission of this book is to educate readers on the wide variety of Chaplin’s artistry: the subtlety of his mimetic satire, the sophistication of his film direction, and his prodigious musical skill that resulted in some of film’s greatest orchestral arrangements. This encyclopedia also emphasizes the singular nature of Chaplin’s biography: his unprecedented renown, the wide list of notables in art and culture with whom he fraternized, and the controversies that seemed to dog each stage of his life, perhaps most notably in his run-ins with the FBI and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, both of whom suspected him of communist leanings. Charlie Chaplin: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures his life, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction that offers a brief account of his life, and a dictionary section listing entries on Chaplin’s childhood, career, family, and associates. The bibliography is one of the largest available of works concerning Chaplin.
Download or read book Focus on Chaplin written by Donald W. McCaffrey and published by Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall. This book was released on 1971 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Chaplin's development as actor and director from his one-reel beginnings. Shows that his range and the universality of his humor raised screen comedy.
Download or read book Mocking Eugenics written by Ewa Barbara Luczak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mocking Eugenics explores the opposition to eugenic discourse mounted by twentieth-century American artists seeking to challenge and destabilize what they viewed as a dangerous body of thought. Focusing on their wielding of humor to attack the contemporaneous science of heredity and the totalitarian impulse informing it, this book confronts the conflict between eugenic theories presented as grounded in scientific and metaphysical truth and the satirical treatment of eugenics as not only absurdly illogical but also antithetical to democratic ideals and inimical to humanistic values. Through analyses of the films of Charlie Chaplin and the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Anita Loos, and Wallace Thurman, Mocking Eugenics examines their use of laughter to dismantle the rhetoric of perfectionism, white supremacy, and nativism that shaped mainstream expressions of American patriotism and normative white masculinity. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, literature, cinema, sociology, humor, and American studies.
Download or read book Vagabonds Tramps and Hobos written by Owen Clayton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the diversity of meanings that accrue around the terms 'hobo', 'tramp', and 'vagabond'.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies written by Douglas Rosenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies offers a full overview of the histories, practices, and critical and theoretical foundations of the rapidly changing landscape of screendance. Drawing on their practices, technologies, theories, and philosophies, scholars from the fields of dance, performance, visual art, cinema and media arts articulate the practice of screendance as an interdisciplinary, hybrid form that has yet to be correctly sited as an academic field worthy of critical investigation. Each chapter discusses and reframe current issues, as a means of promoting and enriching dialogue within the wider community of dance and the moving image. Topics addressed embrace politics of the body; agency, race, and gender in screendance; the relationship of choreography to image; constructs of space and time; representation and effacement; production and curatorial practice; and other areas of intersecting disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies features newly-commissioned and original scholarship that will be essential reading for all those interested in the intersection of dance and the moving image, including film and video-makers, dance artists, screendance artists, academics and writers, producers, composers, as well as the wider interested public. It will become an invaluable resource for researchers and professionals in the field.
Download or read book Marginal People in Deviant Places written by Janice M. Irvine and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marginal People in Deviant Places revisits early- to mid-twentieth-century ethnographic studies, arguing that their focus on marginal subcultures—ranging from American hobos, to men who have sex with other men in St. Louis bathrooms, to hippies, to taxi dancers in Chicago, to elderly Jews in Venice, California—helped produce new ways of thinking about social difference more broadly in the United States. Irvine demonstrates how the social scientists who told the stories of these marginalized groups represented an early challenge to then-dominant narratives of scientific racism, prefiguring the academic fields of gender, ethnic, sexuality, and queer studies in key ways. In recounting the social histories of certain American outsiders, Irvine identifies an American paradox by which social differences are both despised and desired, and she describes the rise of an outsider capitalism that integrates difference into American society by marketing it.
Download or read book The Films of Wes Anderson written by P. Kunze and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wes Anderson's films can be divisive, but he is widely recognized as the inspiration for several recent trends in indie films. Using both practical and theoretical lenses, the contributors address and explain the recurring stylistic techniques, motifs, and themes that dominate Anderson's films and have had such an impact on current filmmaking.
Download or read book The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern written by James E. Caron and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern argues that Sara Parton and her literary alter ego, Fanny Fern, occupy a star-power position within the antebellum literary marketplace dominated by women authors of sentimental fiction, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne (in)famously called “the damn mob of scribbling women.” The Fanny Fern persona represents a nineteenth-century woman voicing the modern feminine within a laughter-provoking bourgeois carnival, a forerunner of Hélène Cixous’s laughing Medusa figure and her theory about écriture féminine. By advancing an innovative theory about an Anglo-American aesthetic, comic belles lettres, Caron explains the comic nuances of Parton’s persona, capable of both an amiable and a caustic satire. The book traces Parton’s burgeoning celebrity, analyzes her satires on cultural expectations of gendered behavior, and provides a close look at her variegated comic style. The book then makes two first-order conclusions: Parton not only offers a unique profile for antebellum women comic writers, but her Fanny Fern persona also anchors a potential genealogy of women comic writers and activists, down to the present day, who could fit Kate Clinton’s concept of fumerism, a feminist style of humor that fumes, that embraces the comic power of a Medusa satire.
Download or read book ReFocus The Films of Preston Sturges written by Jaeckle Jeff Jaeckle and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Director, screenwriter and comic genius, Preston Sturges has been an influence on filmmakers ranging from Orson Welles to the Coen brothers. The first person to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, he wrote and directed some of the most bizarre, controversial, and downright hilarious comedies of the 1940s, including Sullivan's Travels and Hail the Conquering Hero. He may be the most talented Hollywood filmmaker yet to receive the critical recognition he deserves. The Films of Preston Sturges is a pioneering collection of essays by world-famous scholars that chart Sturges' contributions to Hollywood cinema, revealing his pivotal status as an early writer-director, exploring his inimitable style, and making a bold case for his ongoing influence today. Reawakening interest in this filmmaker's life and works, this book will remind readers why Sturges' movies remain not only immensely enjoyable, but of great cultural significance as well.
Download or read book Vision and Blindness in Film written by Dago Schelin and published by Büchner-Verlag. This book was released on 2019-02-13 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to understand "vision", we have to look into concepts of blindness, both diegetically in typical film characters and in the representation of sight or lack thereof. A critical-historical investigation into theories of vision shows that the way we understand visuality today – scientifically and culturally – is very different from pre-modern notions and practices. In this book, Dago Schelin questions categories such as active and passive vision, tactile visuality, as well as blind vision, and discusses them alongside a variety of movies that deal with vision and blindness. Is there a connection between the filmmaker's gaze and an older pre-Keplerian ontology of vision? What is the role of sound in vision? Are our eyes mere camcorders or might they be projectors? These and other questions comprise the fascinating journey on which this study embarks.
Download or read book Charlie Chaplin s Modern Times written by Carl Peters and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, Modern Times (1936), through the lens of film aesthetics, structure, and post-modern perspective. The naïve Tramp character of Modern Times is often seen as the embodiment of a revolutionary reaction to his age. However, this study of the film shows that it is not only difficult but also impossible to accept the long-established critical reception of Chaplin’s film and its characters in our own "Post-modern Times." Drawing from extensive research and bringing post-modern context to the film through a comparative analysis of Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019), the book introduces how exhilarating a comprehensive study of film can be for engaged viewers. Illustrating that a detailed filmic reading of Modern Times can be a guide, or an extended case study, for analysing culture, this book will be of interest to students and teachers in film studies, literary studies, and the visual arts.
Download or read book Charlie Chaplin written by Georgia Hale and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 1999-08-25 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many remember Charlie Chaplin's comic masterpiece, The Gold Rush, as the finest blend of comedy and farce ever brought to the screen. Far fewer remember its heroine, Georgia Hale (1900-1985). Seventy years after the film's appearance, Heather Kiernan brings Georgia Hale back to life in this edition of her hitherto unpublished memoirs. Research work embodied in her perceptive introduction clears up many uncertainties about Hale's life and provides an outline of her most significant years. Hale's own chief purpose was to describe her long and close relationship with Chaplin and his dual personality, which made the relationship at times a love-hate one. As Chaplin's constant companion during the years 1928-1931, she became a part of his social circle, meeting people as diverse as Marion Davies, Sergei Eisenstein, Ralph Barton, and Albert Einstein. The memoir effectively ends with Chaplin's marriage in June 1943 to Oona O'Neill. This unique book contains illustrations from the Chaplin archive, most of which are published here for the first time.
Download or read book ReFocus The Films of Fran ois Ozon written by Loïc Bourdeau and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines François Ozon, one of France’s most prolific and best known international (queer) directors.
Download or read book The Essence of Chaplin written by John Fawell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlie Chaplin's remarkable life and comedic talent have been the focus of countless popular and scholarly studies. In this groundbreaking work, Chaplin's often underrated skills as a film director take center stage. Highlighting the screen icon's significance as a filmmaker, this study focuses on the heart of Chaplin's cinema--his silent works starring his alter-ego, Charlie--and examines both his great silent film features like The Kid, The Gold Rush and Modern Times, and his shorter, earlier films like The Immigrant, The Pawn Shop, The Pilgrim and A Dog's Life. An analysis of the formal properties of Chaplin's filmmaking reveals the merit of his cinema, the depth of its emotion and the extent of its meaning. Chaplin is among the great artists of any medium, in any time, with an ability to touch on very subtle aspects of the human condition.
Download or read book The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin written by Dan Kamin and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008-09-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his early shorts in the 1910s through his final film in 1967, Charlie Chaplin's genius embraced many arts: mime, dance, acting, music, writing, and directing. The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion examines Chaplin's fusion of these arts in his films, providing new understanding of how movement communicates, how comedy routines are structured, and how stage skills can be translated to the screen. An acclaimed comic performing artist himself, Dan Kamin brings a unique insider's perspective to the subject. He explores how Chaplin's physical virtuosity led him to create the timeless visual comedy that brought silent films to their peak. Kamin uncovers the underlying principles behind the filmmaker's gags, illuminating how Chaplin conjured comedy from the fundamental physical laws of movement. He then presents provocative new interpretations of the comedian's sound films, showing how Chaplin remained faithful to his silent comedy roots even as he kept reinventing his art for changing times. Kamin also offers new insights into how Chaplin achieved rapport with audiences and demonstrates how comedy created nearly a century ago is still fresh today. Lavishly illustrated with many never-before-published images, The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin provides the only in-depth analysis of Chaplin as a movement artist and physical comedian. Revealing the inner working of Chaplin's mesmerizing art, this book will appeal not just to Chaplin fans but to anyone who loves comedy. This paperback edition features an annotated bibliography and a foreword by Scott Eyman, author of Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille and Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford.
Download or read book Screened Stages written by Rachel Joseph and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is devoted to tracing the variety of ways that theatre, theatricality, and performance are embedded in Hollywood cinema as screened stages. A screened stage is the literal or metaphorical appearance of a stage on screen. When the Hollywood style emerged in cinema history it traumatically severed the entwined relationship between film and theatre. The book makes the argument that cinema longs for theatre after that separation. The histories of stage and screen persistently crisscross one another making their separation problematic. The screened stage from the end of the nineteenth century until now offers a miniaturized version of cinema and theatre history. Moments of the stage within the screen compress historical styles and movements into saturated representations on film. Such examples overflow the cinematic screen into singular manifestations of presentness. Screened stages uncover what it means to be simultaneously present and absent. This book would be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, film, dance, and performance.
