Author Archive for: ‘Richard Maltby’
How Can Cinema History Matter More?
[1] Out of the blue, a little over ten years ago, Melvyn Stokes telephoned me. He was beginning his annual task of organising the Commonwealth Fund conference on American history at University College, London, and on this occasion he wanted the conference to examine some aspect of American film history. Did I want to be involved in the planning, and …
Read MoreHollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan
Sam B Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan. Cambridge University Press, 1998 ISBN 0521 1625521 A$33.95 (paper) Uploaded 12 November 1999 When I was interviewed for my first job teaching film studies in 1978, the head of the English Department asked me if I really believed that any Hollywood movies were …
Read More“The problem of interpretation …”: authorial and institutional intentions in and around Kiss Me Deadly
Uploaded 30 June 2000 Hardboiled private eye meller from the Mickey Spillane pen, featuring blood, action and sex for exploitable b.o.[1] To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticises.[2] In early November 1954, Robert Aldrich submitted a …
Read MoreMore Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts
James Naremore More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts Berkeley, Los Angeles,London: University of California Press, 1998 ISBN 0 520 21294 0 359 pp US $19.95 (paper) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Almost every book on film noir begins with the problem of definition, usually only to deposit it half-way through the Introduction once it has served its purpose of …
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