Author Archive for: ‘Brian McFarlane’

Dianne F. Sadoff, Victorian Vogue: British Novels on the Screen. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis & London, 2009 ISBN: 978-0-8166-6092-6 US$25.00 (pb) 329pp (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) I have read this book from beginning to end, and I expect to be in a minority of one in that respect. Maverick at last? I shall return to …

Laurie N. Ede, British Film Design: A History London: I.B. Tauris, 2010 ISBN-13: 978-1848851085 £15.99 (pb) 248pp (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris) A Himalayan convent created in mountainous Pinewood; the Brief Encounter (1945) station and buffet; Dickens’ London with St Paul’s dome shimmering distantly beyond Fagin’s slum; right down to the modern contrasts of Trainspotting (1996) (complete with toilet-bowl …

Sean O’Sullivan, Mike Leigh Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-252-07819-4 US$22.00 (pb) 208pp (Review copy supplied by University of Illinois Press) Not many films that run for 129 minutes leave me wishing they wouldn’t stop – and that they would linger longer over certain glorious compositions – in the way that Mike Leigh’s most recent production, Another Year …

The way we were Vanessa Toulmin, Simon Popple & Patrick Russell, The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film. London: BFI, 2004. ISBN: 1844570460 £15.99 (pb) ISBN: 1844570479 £48.00 (hb) 288 pp (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) Few discoveries of recent years have more to offer students of film history than the 826 rolls of nitrate …

Mark Glancy, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: From the 1920s to the Present London and New York, I.B. Tauris, 2014 ISBN: 978-1-84885-407-9 UK £62.00 (hb) 340pp (Review copy supplied by I.B.Tauris Those who read Mark Glancy’s 1999 study, When Hollywood Loved Britain, will be eager to come to grips with his newest chronicling of how the ‘special relationship’ has …

Gene D. Phillips, Beyond the Epic: The Life & Films of David Lean. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006. ISBN: 0 8131 2415 8 US$39.95 (hb) 545pp (Review copy supplied by University of Kentucky Press) What is David Lean’s standing now, I wonder? Filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg claim to revere his later works; he has attracted a couple of …

Laraine Porter and Bryony Dixon (eds.), Picture Perfect: Landscape, Place and Travel in British Cinema before 1930. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007-09-12. ISBN: 1 905 81601 4 £14.99 (pb) 160pp (Review copy supplied by University of Exeter Press) One of the most heartening and, indeed, exciting revelations of film studies in recent years has been the bringing to light …

Sue Harper, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. ISBN: 0 82644 733 3 (pb) 267pp £16.99 (Review copy supplied by Continuum International Publishing Group) Andrew Spicer, Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN: 1 86064 563 1 (hb) 262pp £35.00 Uploaded 1 …

“Continuities of consciousness” Grahame Smith, Dickens and the Dream of Cinema. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003. ISBN: 0 7190 5563 6 240pp UK£14.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Manchester University Press) ‘The aim of this book is to tell a story about Dickens’s role in the emergence of film, a narrative of consciousness across different media and across …

Christopher Shannon, Bowery to Broadway: The American Irish in Classic Hollywood Cinema. University of Scranton Press, Scranton & London, 2010 ISBN: 978-1-58966-200-1 US$25.00 (hb) 220pp (Review copy supplied by Scranton University Press) Priests promoting a down-to-earth muscular Christianity; good-natured boozing fathers; saintly mothers working finger to the bone; pixilated soothsayer types: these were some of the ill-considered images of the …

Andrew Higson (ed), Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain 1896-1930. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002. Paperback: ISBN: 0859897176 Price: GBP25.00 USD39.95 Hardback: ISBN: 0859896595 Price: GBP47.50 USD89.95 (Review copy supplied by University of Exeter Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 In the remarkable upsurge in scholarly study of British cinema which has characterised the last few years, one of …