New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

Links to all items are set out for you below.

• The Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 2
  

• Rush to Judgement: Imperfect Justice in Fury (1936)
  Stella Bruzzi
• You Only Live Once (1937)
  V. F. Perkins
• Going Straight: The Past and the Future in The Return of Frank James (1940)
  Edward Gallafent
• The Woman in the Window (1944)
  Mark Rappaport
• Guess-Work: Scarlet Street (1945)
  Adrian Martin
• The Big Heat: Acts of Violence (1953)
  Peter William Evans
• Human Desire (1954)
  Deborah Thomas
• Lang With Lacan: The Power of the Gaze in Moonfleet (1955)
  Peter Benson

• Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of Découpage
  Christian Keathley
• The Texture of Performance in Psycho and its Remake
  Alex Clayton
• The Cry of the Owl: Investigating Decision-Making in a Contemporary Feature Film
  John Gibbs

This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.

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A new MOVIE: Fritz Lang, Robin Wood, Vincente Minnelli, Susan Hayward and More

Image from The Testament of Dr Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933). Read Michael Walker's article on this film here.

A great way to start the week, Film Studies For Free thinks. The second issue of the new Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism has just been posted online, with a wonderful looking Lang dossier, a fine tribute to the late Robin Wood, which takes the form of seven of his rarest pieces from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And there's more besides on Susan Hayward and Vincente Minnelli. Direct links to all items are given below.

Now, to read it!

Issue 2

• Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 1
  

• Notes on Metropolis Michael Walker
• M: Leading the Blind Douglas Pye & Iris Luppa
• Das Testament des Dr Mabuse Michael Walker

• Susan Hayward in the 50s Edward Gallafent

• Madame Bovary, C’est Moi – Signed, Vincente Minnelli Mark Rappaport

• Robin Wood: A Tribute
  

• Psychoanalyse de Psycho / Psychoanalysis of Psycho Robin Wood

• Attitudes in Advise and Consent Robin Wood

• In Memoriam Michael Reeves Robin Wood

• Sense of Dislocation Robin Wood

• Signs and Motifs Robin Wood

• Moments of Release Robin Wood

• Call Me Ishmael Robin Wood

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"European film-makers construct the United States"

Image from Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952). Read Hilaria Loyo's
Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952)

Thanks to the ever brilliant David Hudson, Film Studies For Free heard about a must-read item on American cinema, a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies entitled European film-makers construct the United States. Links to all the brilliant and openly accessible articles are given below.

European Journal of American Studies (1, 2010) Special issue on Film: European film-makers construct the United States

• Melvyn Stokes and Dominique Sipière
  Out of Many, One: European film-makers construct the United States 
  
  
• David Roche
  (De)constructing “America”: the Case of Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993) 
  
  
• Frank Mehring
  From Independence Day to Land of Plenty: Screening American Patriotism from German Émigré Perspectives before and after 9/11 
  
  
• Hilaria Loyo
  Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952) 
  
  
• Ian Scott
  “Don’t Be Frightened Dear … This Is Hollywood”: British Filmmakers in Early American Cinema 
  
  
• Yves Carlet
  Frank Capra and Elia Kazan, American outsiders 
  
  
• Vicente J. Benet
  Eldorado Revisited: Spanish Film-makers in Reagan’s America 
  
  
• Jeffrey L. Meikle
  Transatlantic Refractions: Ambivalence and Cultural Hybridity in the Euro-American Road Movie 
  
  

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More V.F. Perkins Online

Image from You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)

Film Studies For Free is extremely fond of the work of V. F. Perkins, world-renowned author of Film as Film (London: Penguin Books, 1972 - see an recent interesting review HERE).

FSFF has previously drawn attention to two pieces of Perkins' hugely influential work which are freely available online:

• 'Same Tune Again! Repetition and Framing in Letter from an Unknown Woman' (originally published in CineAction! no. 52) republished online by Danish film studies journal 16:9 (September 2003) and accessible HERE.
• 'Moments of Choice' [on film directing] (originally published in The Movie, ch. 58, reprinted in Ann Lloyd (ed.), Movie Book of the Fifties, Orbis, 1982) republished online by the Australian journal Rouge (issue 9, 2006) and accessible HERE.

Today, it is delighted to bring to its readers' attention a further Open Access essay by Perkins which is currently stored at WRAP: the Warwick Research Archive Project.

The piece is an as yet undated and otherwise unpublished article entitled 'You Only Live Once' that brilliantly treats this magisterial 1937 film directed by Fritz Lang.

Here's an excerpt from the essay with relevant hyperlinks added by FSFF:

Anyone who wants to write usefully about You Only Live Once has to build on the work of George M Wilson. A chapter in [Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)] makes a systematic presentation of the movie’s narrative strategies, and a detailed reading of key images. Wilson shows how Lang’s picture is designed to educate its viewers in the manipulability of the image, and to demonstrate the power of the film sequence to deceive us by obscuring key points in its story and by soliciting preferred readings that the content of the images may not in fact guarantee. The achievement that Wilson uncovers is the more remarkable in that it occurs not in an illustrated lecture but in a fiction movie, one that works to powerful effect within its genre of social protest melodrama.

Wilson’s essay opened my eyes to You Only Live Once, a movie that I had previously found opaque because, apart from its evident social project, I had not seen a purpose in its meticulous design beyond that of giving power and plausibility to a noticeably contrived tale. In what follows I take for granted the main lines of Wilson’s argument in order to develop some remarks on Lang’s mise-en-scène in two representative sequences.

More about → More V.F. Perkins Online