Author Archive for: ‘Jeannette Delamoir’
Six encounters with aviators: Early cinema, flight, danger and gender
Cinema and aviation are quintessential enterprises of the modern era. Alison McMahon, in her study of pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché, refers to film and flying as “the industries of motion” and notes their closely linked development, particularly in France: “In some cases the same inventors worked on both . . . The combination of interest in spectatorship, projection of …
Read MoreThe first “gum-leaf mafia”: Australians in Hollywood 1915-1925
Introduction December 2002: After the Film and History Conference in Adelaide, I am flying home, having given my paper on Australians in early (1915-1925) Hollywood. I flip through the airline magazine and am amused to find an article about Australians in today’s Hollywood. “Aussies are making it big in Hollywood, winning awards and demanding huge fees,” declares the lead-in. “But …
Read MoreThe Girl from God’s country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema
Kay Armatage, The Girl from God’s country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. ISBN: 0 802085423. 428pp £20 (hb) (Review copy supplied by University of Toronto Press) Kay Armatage’s study of Nell Shipman – screenwriter, star, producer and director – was written with the declared feminist intention of restoring to view a woman who …
Read MoreTheda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography
Ronald Genini, Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publisher 1996 ISBN: 0-7864-0202-4. 158 pp Uploaded 15 September 1998 Theda Bara, the best known of a large number of screen vamps, was born in the Sahara Desert. “Weaned on serpents’ blood,” she grew into “a crystal-gazing …
Read MoreWoman as spectacle in Zhang Yimou’s “Theatre of Punishments”
Uploaded 18 December 1998 Various writers on Fifth Generation filmmaking have noted a characteristic ambiguity which refuses to prescribe a single set subject position for audiences. [1] Rey Chow, for instance, describes Zhang Yimou’s films as the “enigmatic traps he sets up in order to engage his viewers in an infinite play and displacement of meanings and surfaces.” [2] She writes: …
Read MoreJ. P. McGowan: Biography of a Hollywood Pioneer
John J. McGowan, J. P. McGowan: Biography of a Hollywood Pioneer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005. ISBN: 0 7864 1994 6 220pp $US39.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by McFarland & Company) Early filmmaker J.P. McGowan – the “Railroad Man” – became famous for making thrilling, silent-era serials involving trains, usually starring his wife Helen Holmes as the plucky heroine …
Read More“I Dips Me Lid”: The Sentimental Bloke’s Hats
Ginger Mick (Gilbert Emery) and Bill (Arthur Tauchert) in Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke. From the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Introduction Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke, completed in 1919, is considered a landmark Australian film. Yet audiences in the United States did not feel as enthusiastic about the film as did those in Australia. In fact, the film …
Read MoreUndressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies
Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. London: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0-415-13957 226 pages. A $29.95. Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1996. ISBN 0-85170-574-X. 138 pages. US $49.95 (hb) US $19.95 (pb) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Given the important role that costume plays in film, it is surprising that there …
Read MoreAlice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema
Alison McMahan, Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. New York and London: Continuum, 2002. ISBN: 0 826 45158 6 384pp US$35.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Continuum international publishing group) Alison McMahan’s book analyses the career of Alice Guy Blaché, a cinema pioneer in France and the United States. McMahan’s study also provides a valuable commentary on the …
Read MoreGhosts: Death’s Double and the Phenomenon of Theatre
Alice Rayner, Ghosts: Death’s Double and the Phenomenon of Theatre. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. ISBN: 0 8166 4545 0 $US22.50 (pb) 207pp (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Alice Rayner, associate professor of drama at Stanford University, declares that the project of her book is “making sense of ghosts” (x), which suggests she intends to render …
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