Susan Smith's treatment of the works of the most subtle of all film-makers analyses the key elements of suspense, humour and tone across the whole of the director's career. Arguing that all three are ...central to our viewing experience, the book demonstrates how Hitchcock's masterly integration of those elements is the key to his success as a film-maker.Examining in detail such films as Sabotage, Notorious, Rear Window, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope and The Birds, amongst many others, the book discusses the idea of the director as saboteur and the importance of 'the avoidance of cliché' in Hitchcock's narrative.
Film historian James Chapman has mined Hitchcock's own papers to investigate fully for the first time the spy thrillers of the world's most famous filmmaker. Hitchcock made his name as director of ...the spy movie. He returned repeatedly to the genre from the British classics of the 1930s, including The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, through wartime Hollywood films Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur to the Cold War tracts North by Northwest, Torn Curtain and his unmade film The Short Night. Chapman's close reading of these films demonstrates the development of Hitchcock's own style as well as how the spy genre as a whole responded to changing political and cultural contexts from the threat of Nazism in the 1930s and 40s to the atom spies and double agents of the post-war world.
Film provides experience potential. Contemporary cognitive psychology gives the opportunity to define this impact on the film spectators mind in regard to different aspects of cognition, imagination ...and emotion. Proceeding from these positions, this book.
Whether they rated the film or not, when Bryan Singer's labyrinthine thriller 'The Usual Suspects' appeared in 1995, many critics admitted they couldn't follow the plot. While those who liked it ...revelled in its relentless permutations, those who did not cried all flash and no content. But from a budget of a little under $6 million, the film reaped profits of $23.5 million. And the Internet Movie Database put it in fifteenth place in a poll of 250 movies. The Usual Suspects won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Kevin Spacey received the Best Supporting Actor award. The DVD is a bestseller around the world. Do you have to understand a film in order to appreciate it? The Devil works in mysterious ways
The frequent and unnecessary cutaways to a coiled rope in the establishment scene, like a filmic form of the device of repetition in the oral tradition, suggest to us from the beginning that we are ...embarking on a winding tale.
The frequent and unnecessary cutaways to a coiled rope in the establishment scene, like a filmic form of the device of repetition in the oral tradition, suggest to us from the beginning that we are ...embarking on a winding tale.
Whether they rated the film or not, when Bryan Singer's labyrinthine thriller 'The Usual Suspects' appeared in 1995, many critics admitted they couldn't follow the plot. While those who liked it ...revelled in its relentless permutations, those who did not cried all flash and no content. But from a budget of a little under $6 million, the film reaped profits of $23.5 million. And the Internet Movie Database put it in fifteenth place in a poll of 250 movies. The Usual Suspects won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Kevin Spacey received the Best Supporting Actor award. The DVD is a bestseller around the world. Do you have to understand a film in order to appreciate it? The Devil works in mysterious ways
'High Noon' (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) is an iconic western, yet its place within the genre is contested. The film is cited by critics as exemplary of the way that westerns can successfully explore the ...political and social issues of the moment, and praised for the enduring, universal relevance of its themes. It is held by some to be one of the best western films ever made, but others criticise it as a betrayal of the genre. These mixed evaluations of High Noon stem from an interpretation of the film as a political allegory for the 1950s communist witch-hunts led by senator Joseph McCarthy, and from its innovative, stylistic temporal structure and use of real time. Yet when High Noon is considered in the context of 1950s Hollywood, these unconventional aspects of the film are revealed to be part of wider industrial trends for 'adult films', psychological westerns and explorations of marketable elements of social engagement.
