Author Archive for: ‘Adrian Danks’
“Something Short of Fascinating”: Re-examining Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners (1960)
[1] ‘Peak’ Production Between 1958 and 1959 four significant international/transnational feature-film productions were made in Australia: On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959), Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Season of Passion, Leslie Norman, 1959), The Siege of Pinchgut (Harry Watt, 1960) and The Sundowners (Fred Zinnemann, 1960). [2] In many respects, this represents a period of peak production ‘down under’ prior …
Read MoreChris Marker: La Jetée
Janet Harbord, Chris Marker: La Jetée. Afterall Books, London, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-84638-048-8 UK£9.95 (pb) 112pp (Review copy supplied by Afterall Books) Janet Harbord’s elegantly written and structured monograph Chris Marker: La Jetée is an early and distinguished entry in Afterall Books’ “One Work” series, a collection of single-authored books devoted to contemporary (or at least post-1940s) art. It currently sits alongside monographs devoted …
Read MoreHollywood Quarterly: Film Culture in Postwar America 1945-1957
Eric Smoodin & Ann Martin (eds.), Hollywood Quarterly: Film Culture in Postwar America 1945-1957. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 0 520 23274 7 417pp US$24.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Eric Smoodin and Ann Martin’s Hollywood Quarterly provides an informative sample of writing published by this important film/communications journal in one of the defining – perhaps …
Read MoreThe hunter gets captured by the game: Robert Aldrich’s Hollywood
Uploaded 30 June 2000 This essay discusses three Robert Aldrich films that deal with the worlds of film production. The first is The Big Knife (USA 1955), a bitter, hyper-real tragedy set within the Hollywood studio star system, and which in 1955 was the first film to be produced under the Associates and Aldrich banner. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (USA 1962), a …
Read MoreFishing from the Same Stream: The New Iranian Cinema, Close-Up and the “Film-on-film” Genre
“I have hundreds of small sources of inspiration throughout the day, just watching people in daily routines. I think what happens in real life is more important than the cinema. My technique is similar to collage. I collect pieces and put them together. I don’t invent material. I just watch and take it from the daily life of people around …
Read MoreScorsese’s Men: Melancholia and the Mob
Mark Nicholls, Scorsese’s Men: Melancholia and the Mob. North Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia, 2004. ISBN: 1 86403 156 5 191 pp Au$29.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Pluto Press) The front cover of Mark Nicholls’ Scorsese’s Men: Melancholia and the Mob features a series of differently shaded silhouettes of male characters from Scorsese’s films. Within the largest of these symptomatically imprecise figures …
Read MoreThe Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place
Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University California Press, 2001. ISBN 0 520 22738 7 (pb) 461pp. (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Scott MacDonald has some claim to being the leading contemporary authority on American avant-garde cinema. His dedication to this expansive if loosely …
Read MoreFrom Bonanza to Buffalo Bill: Robert Altman and the Western
Introduction: Altman’s Last Stand, or Buffalo Bill and the Indians and the Bicentennial Western [I]n Paris they referred to McCabe [& Mrs. Miller] as an anti-western and they called it the “demystification of an era”. That was my reason for getting involved in McCabe in the first place because I don’t like Westerns. I don’t like the obvious lack of …
Read MoreThe Art of Falling Apart: Petulia and the Fate of Richard Lester
Petulia (1968) sits at a crucial juncture in American/British director Richard Lester’s career. Some elements of its filigreed and somewhat hyperactive style relate it clearly to the often kinetic films that precede it – such as A Hard Day’s Night (1964), The Knack… and how to get it (1965), Help! (1965), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to …
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