Reframing Cinema Histories: ALPHAVILLE Issue 6

Header image from the symposium website for “Reframing Cinema Histories”

This issue of Alphaville originates in a one-day symposium, “Reframing Cinema Histories”, which was organised at University College Cork in March 2013. The aim of the event was to bring together a select group of scholars working on a range of historical projects and, through presentations of specific case studies and a round table discussion, highlight the variety of methodological approaches that may be adopted by the researcher studying and writing about cinema history [Reframing Cinema Histories: Editorial by Pierluigi Ercole and Gwenda Young, Alphaville, Issue 6, 2013]

And the new journal issues just keep on coming! Today, Film Studies For Free links to a very high quality issue of special interest to film historians and others working in film historiography: Alphaville's latest offering on Reframing Cinema Histories.

Utter brilliance from start to finish, IFSFFHO...


Alphaville, Issue 6, Winter 2013: Reframing Cinema Histories: 

• Editorial by Pierluigi Ercole and Gwenda Young (Issue 6 Editors) Articles:

• "A Taste in Pictures": The Second Birth of Cinema in Cork by Denis Condon, National University of Ireland Maynooth
• Understanding Dutch Film Culture: A Comparative Approach by Judith Thissen, Utrecht University
• "The Greatest Film of the Fascist Era": The Distribution of Camicia nera in Britain by Pierluigi Ercole, Oxford Brookes University
• Exploring Racial Politics, Personal History and Critical Reception: Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust (1949) by Gwenda Young, University College Cork
• An Advertiser's Dream: The Construction of the "Consumptionist" Cinematic Persona of Mercedes Gleitze by Ciara Chambers, University of Ulster
• The Politics of Independence: The China Syndrome (1979), Hollywood Liberals and Antinuclear Campaigning by Peter Krämer, University of East Anglia
• What is the Value of a Technological History of Cinema? by Lee Grieveson, University College London

Book Reviews:

1. A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove, by John Spong (2012) Reviewer: Matthew Carter, University of Essex
2. Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video, by Akira Mizuta Lippit (2012) Reviewer: Niall Flynn, Independent Scholar
3. Men and Masculinities in Irish Cinema, by Debbie Ging (2013) Reviewer: Barry Monahan, University College Cork

[Book Reviews Editor: Ian Murphy]

Conference Reports:

1. World Cinema On-Demand: Film Distribution and Education in the Streaming Media Era
2. Queen's University Belfast, 15–16 June 2012; 26 June 2013; 19 September 2013 Reporter: Alexandra Kapka, Queen's University Belfast
3. Revisiting Star Studies, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, 12–14 June 2013 Reporter: Jennifer O'Meara, Trinity College Dublin
4. A Star is Born: Cinematic Reflections on Stardom and the "Stardom Film", King's College London, 13 September 2013 Reporter: Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg, King's College London

[Reports Editor: Yuanyuan Chen]

More about → Reframing Cinema Histories: ALPHAVILLE Issue 6

"Dangerous" Cinematic Women Studies

The above is a short video primer by Catherine Grant. It offers an audiovisual introduction to issues of gender, sexuality and movement in relation to Rita Hayworth's performance as Gilda in Charles Vidor's 1946 film.

The femme fatale is a product of the male imaginary, which emerges in literature and the visual arts under contingent socio-political conditions as a challenge to coherent and stable identities. [...]
     The emergence of the femme fatale motif in literature, art and cinema generally coincides with periods of social or political instability and is not specific to a culture, society or era, but exhibits countless masks as she may manifest herself in diverse historical or geo-political contexts, and through a variety of artistic and literary forms. She embodies traces of a myriad of powerful, as well as menacing, historical, biblical and mythical female figures, such as Cleopatra, Salome, or the Sirens; yet this wicked and barren creature is always imbued with an alluring beauty and rapacious sexuality that is potentially deadly to man. The femme fatale figure is a recurrent patriarchal construct, a projection of all that exists beyond that which is normal, familiar, or safe. As Rebecca Stott observes, she is a multiple sign, or ‘the Other around whom the qualities of all Other collect in the male imagination’ (1992: 39). As such, her appearances are always symptomatic of a society in crisis. [Eva Bru-Domínguez, 'The Body as a Conflation of Discourses: The femme fatale in Mercè Rodoreda’s Mirall trencat' (1974)', Journal of Catalan Studies 2009]

[I]s it possible that the tangled webs of violence, sexuality, pathology, and intrigue at the core of certain film noir offer moments of reversal and exception which challenge women's role as eternal victim? How is an anti-feminist backlash or male anxiety around women's power projected into these paranoid film scenarios? To what extent can such disruptions be contained through conventional "happy family" closure - or through the violent death of the (anti-)heroine whose glittering image lingers as the credits rolls? Working against the inescapable grain of the "repressive rule" of female victimhood, I choose here to seize on the exceptional figure of the "fatale femme." While the exception may help define the rule, she also keeps alive the possibility, the inevitability, of transformation in gendered relations of power. [Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir: reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993: 6-7]

Rather than promoting images of women that emphasize their spirit and unknowable power, and rather than promoting images of women that rely on their bodies, finally, we need to illustrate the contexts that inform women’s experience. I want to suggest some of the reasons why we’ve grown accustomed to identifying film noir’s “femme fatale” without examining these contexts that inform her presence in film noir, by doing just that: examining the settings—social, psychological, political, physical, and geographical—that define her experience, which is, I want strongly to suggest, a far better thing to define than “woman” herself.
     This study seeks to modify the tone of feminist discussions about film noir’s women by reorienting our attention to the narrative, social contexts, and mise-en-scene that show the relationship between women’s powers and the limits placed on them by social rules. Both the view of the “femme fatale” as misogynist projection and the view of the “femme fatale” as opaque yet transgressive female force emphasize her status as object or symbol (as object of scorn or as the mysterious and opaque “other” that threatens to destroy the male subject). My aim is to adjust our focus on film noir and gender so that we illuminate these women’s narratives rather than mystifying women as objects or images. [Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009): 5. Book info.]

Film Studies For Free wishes its reader a very happy International Women's Day with a varied curatorial selection of online scholarly work touching on possibly the most studied 'object' in all of feminist film theory: the 'dangerous' woman, sometimes fatal, sometimes a fatality...

If you are a film goer you know her kind. She is attractive, alluring, enigmatic, enticing, teasing, siren-like. Totally tautological. You might come across her dancing in a cinematic cabaret or show, smoking in a private detective's office, gracing a film noir alleyway, or haunting a difficult to decipher flashback. Or turning up like a beautiful but bad penny, provoking your scopophilia (and/or your epistemophilia), just about anywhere in almost every period of international film history.

Just what is it about these cinematic women? There certainly isn't one answer to that question, but the studies linked to below might very well help you to begin to tackle it.

If there are any important online resources that FSFF has missed, please do list them in the comments thread.

• Rihab Kassatly Bagnole, Imaging the Almeh: Transformation and Multiculturalization of the Eastern Dancer in Painting, Theatre, and Film, 1850-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005
• Linda Berkvens, 'From Below to Above the Title: The Construction of the Star Image of Barbara Stanwyck, 1930-1935', Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 2, No 1 (2009) 
• Rebecca H. Bias, From golden age to silver screen: French Music-Hall Cinema from 1930-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005
• John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008 
• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008 
• Derek Dubois, 'Silent Subversions : Exploring the Enigma of Female Spectatorship in Silent Cinema', Master's Theses, Dissertations and Graduate Research Overview. Paper 32, 2009
• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21
• Maura Edmond, 'Fashionable Attractions: Fashion Parades in Popular Entertainment from Lady Duff-Gordon to Lady Gaga', SCAN, 7.2, November 2010 
• Catherine Gomes, “‘The Era Of Lustrous Screen Sirens Lives On, Thousands Of Miles From Hollywood’: The Cross-Cultural Reception Of Chinese Martial Arts Cinema’s Sword-welding Actresses,” Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, Vol 1, The Reception Study Society, 2008
• Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009) Book info.
• Melissa Jane Hardie, 'Loose Slots: Figuring the Strip in Showgirls', Xtext 1 (1996): 24-35
• Lee Horsley, 'Fatal Women in the Hard-Boiled Fifties' An extract from The Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001; 2009) 
• Thomas Kiely, 'Erendira: A not-so-innocent film', from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986 
• Naomi King, ‘Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine’, Crimeculture, 2002
• Aspasia Kotsopoulos and Josephine Mills, 'The Crying Game: Gender, genre and "postfeminism"', from Jump Cut, no. 39, June 1994
• Elizabeth Lee, 'The Femme Fatale as Object', Victorian Web, 1997
• Scott Loren, 'Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir', European Journal of American Studies, 1, 2008
• Maree Macmillan, 'Beyond the femme fatale: The mythical Pandora as cathartic, transformative force', in Illuminating the Dark Side: Evil, Women and the Feminine, edited by Andrea Ruthven and Gabriela Mádlo (InterDisciplinary.net, 2010)
• Maasilta Mari, African Carmen. Transnational Cinema as an Arena for Cultural Contradictions, PhD Thesis, University of Tampere, 2007
• Michael Mills,  'High Heels on a Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale', Modern Times (date unknown)
• Daniel Morgan, 'Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and Ethics of Camera Movement, Critical Inquiry, Autumn 2011 
• Laura Mulvey, 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema', Screen, 1975
• Fred Nadis, 'Mechanical Dolls and Rank Ladies', Left History,Vol 7, No 1 (2000)
• Rebecca Claire Naughten, Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2010 
• Sheila O'Malley, 'Five Things About Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy', The Sheila Variations, February 19, 2011
  
• Anne Helen Petersen, The Gossip Industry: Producing and Distributing Star Images, Celebrity Gossip, and Entertainment News, 1910 - 2010, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2011
• Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir: reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993
• Patricia Pisters, 'Lili and Rachel: Hollywood, History and Women in Fassbinder and Verhoeven' in Kooijman, Jaap, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (eds), Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam University Press, 2008)
• Barbara L. Romanczuk, Screening Zola’s women, PhD, Ohio State University, 2002 
• Sarah Sik, '[Review of] Evil by Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale by Elizabeth K. Menon (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, 2012
• Cheryl Inez Simon, Gender, genre and globalization : discourses of "Femininity" in the popular culture of the 1990's. PhD thesis, Concordia University, PhD Thesis, Concordia University, 1998
• Scott Snyder, 'Personality Disorder and the Film Noir Femme Fatale', Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(3) (2001)
• Jamie L. Stuart, The Business and Pleasure of Filmic Lesbians Performing Onstage, PhD, Bowling Green State University, 2006
• Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995 
• Deborah Walker, 'Re-reading the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: an evolutionary perspective', The Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 5, No. 6
• Emma Whiting, 'Dangerous Women and the Abject in the Noir Thriller', Crimeculture, 2005

More about → "Dangerous" Cinematic Women Studies

On the art (and ideology) of John Ford's films

Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)

Even if John Ford had not made his ten best movies (whichever they are), he'd still be the greatest. [Tag Gallagher]

In Young Mr. Lincoln, John Ford achieves the perfection of his art. Never were his matter and his method more aptly fitted, and never were his tendencies toward sprawl and overemphasis more rigorously controlled. It is a masterpiece of concision in which every element in every shot, every ratio, every movement, every shift of viewpoint seems dense with significance, yet it breathes an air of casual improvisation. While its surfaces paint, with relaxed humor and effortless nostalgic charm, an imaginary antebellum America, it sustains an underlying note of somber apprehension, all the more powerful for being held in check.

Ford finds a mood that avoids the clutter and ponderousness of most Hollywood history movies, a mood more of parable than of textbook chronicle. That preoccupation with history and its contradictions—the variance between actual human experience and the official version that will be constructed after the fact—that suffuses films as different as They Were Expendable (1945), Fort Apache (1948), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) resonates troublingly at the heart of this film, for all its apparent serenity. Nothing here is as uncomplicated as it seems designed to appear, which may be why the editors of Cahiers du cinéma, in a celebrated, if by now scarcely readable, special issue of 1970, brought the full force of their post-’68 Althusserian-Lacanian rhetoric to bear on the film in a scene-by-scene analysis, as if here the secret mechanisms of the American ideology itself might be decoded and exposed. In trying to pin down the meanings of Ford’s art, however, Cahiers du cinéma missed his mercurial—and, admittedly, sometimes infuriating––ability to be in two places at once. If Ford’s Lincoln exhibits at once a radiant sincerity and the devious subtlety of a trickster, he is to that extent the director’s mirror image. [Geoffrey O'Brien, 'Young Mr. Lincoln: Here in Waiting', The Criterion Collection, February 13, 2006]

Cahiers du cinéma’s 1969 analysis of Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), reprinted in Screenin 1972 in its first English translation, introduced symptomatic reading to British feminist film critics such as Pam Cook and Claire Johnston. Louis Althusser (1968, trans. 1970: 28-9) coined the term “symptomatic reading,” an interpretive strategy that searches not only for the structural dominants in a text but most importantly, for absences and omissions that are an indication of what the dominant ideology seeks to repress, contain or marginalize. Reading against the grain operates under the assumption that the text comprises a hierarchy of discourses in which one discourse – patriarchal ideology – asserts its dominance over others. Nevertheless, tensions between the dominant ideology and subordinate discourses produce ideological contradictions that the popular film cannot mask nor reconcile, try as it might. [Aspasia Kotsopoulos, 'Reading against the grain revisited', from Jump Cut, Issue 44, 2001]

While it is difficult to ascertain exactly how an ‘oblique’ analysis of film would proceed, the editors of Cahiers [du cinéma’s] essay on John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939) is a significant example of this type of criticism and stands as exemplary of the many important analyses of mainstream Hollywood films that were carried out in the pages of Cahiers and elsewhere. The analysis of Young Mr Lincoln is a close reading of this film, which belongs to the category that is in many ways the most difficult to endorse: films that remain within bourgeois ideology, but reveal its ambiguities and fissures (when subjected to a highly specialised mode of reading).The reading by the Editors of Cahiers uses principles of Marxism, semiology and credits Marxist and Freudian discourses, and includes fleeting references to Jean-Pierre Oudart, Althusser, Roland Barthes and Serge Daney, and Lacan. However, there is no sustained explanation as to precisely which principles drawn from these discourses they will deploy. While Peter Wollen, in his Afterword to the translation of the analysis of Young Mr Lincoln in Screen, declares that the text “owes its concepts to Jacques Lacan” [...], this text would seem to be exemplary of Žižek’s contention that a sustained and explicit consideration of Lacan was in fact missing from 60s and 70s film theory.
     At first glance, therefore, the Young Mr Lincoln article might seem to exemplify a move towards Lacanian psychoanalysis. Furthermore, upon first glance, it appears to be a step towards a consideration of narrative content. As such, it might seem to undermine a contention of this thesis: that the content of popular film was systematically precluded by considerations of film and ideology during the 60s and 70s. In this article, the Editorial Collective treat the text of the film in many ways like a work of literature, analysing it sequence by sequence, with scarcely a mention of its materiality. It could be argued that here is an example of textual analysis that confounds the assertion that subject matter was neglected in favour of form and materiality in analyses of film and ideology. While an extensive examination of the content of Young Mr Lincoln, or signifié, to use the Editors’ turn of phrase, appears to consume the bulk of this article, it must be noted that it is the film’s form which is ostensibly the impetus for the discussion of its content. [Kate Greenwood, Confronting the limits: Renditions of the Real in the Edge of the Construct Film, PhD Thesis, The University of Adelaide, December 2006: 63-64]

It's been a slightly quieter week than usual here at Film Studies For Free, as its voracious readers may have noticed.

A good reason for that is that this blog's author has merrily begun a new university year, teaching ... (drum roll) ... Film Theory!

This shiny, new, non-virtual, pedagogical order will continue to slow up FSFF's production a little, it's true, but it will also inspire the direction that some of its entries will take in the coming weeks and months.

For example, as next week's teaching focus is John Ford's 1939 film Young Mr, Lincoln, and the ideological film readings that it inspired, or provoked, here's a little list of online and openly accessible scholarly books, articles and videos on the inspirational and/or provocative work of that very director.

• Charles Barr, 'About the John Ford Archive', Paper at Archives and Auteurs Conference, University of Stirling, September 2-4, 2009'
• Charles Barr, 'Irish Brother Feeney: Francis Ford in John Ford’s films', Senses of Cinema, Issue 55, 2010
• David Bordwell, 'John Ford, silent man', Observations on Film Art, June 28, 2010 
• Seán Crosson, "‘They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever pa, ‘cause we're the people' - Misrepresenting death in Jim Sheridan's In America (2003)", Estudios Irlandeses: Journal of Irish Studies, Issue 3, (2008)
• Seán Crosson, 'Vanishing Point: An examination of some consequences of globalization for contemporary Irish film', E-Keltoi, Vol. 2, 2003
• Toni D'Angela, 'Interview with Tag Gallagher about John Ford', La Furia Umana, No. 3, Winter 2010 
• Wheeler Winston Dixon, 'Andrew V. McLaglen: Last of the Hollywood Professionals', Senses of Cinema, Issue 50, 2009
• Ruurd Dykstra, 'The Search for Spectators: VistaVision and Technicolor in The Searchers', Kino: The Western Undergraduate Journal of Film Studies, 1.1, 2010 
• Arthur M. Eckstein, 'Darkening Ethan: John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956) from Novel to Screenplay to Screen', originally published in Cinema Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 3-24
• Martin Flanagan, 'Re-Making Time: Chronotopes of the West in Lone Star (1996) and The Searchers (1956', Reconstruction, 7.3, 2007
• Richard Franklin, 'John Ford', Senses of Cinema, July 2002
• Tag Gallagher, John Ford, the Man and His Films, 2007
• Tag Gallagher, 'Brother Feeney: Francis Ford" Senses of Cinema, Issue 53, 2009 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Passage: John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln', Senses of Cinema, Issue 39, 2006
• Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Till '47', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
• Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Rises from the Dead. Again', Senses of Cinema, Issue 26, 2003 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Going My Way', Screening the Past, December 2001
• Ross Gibson, 'The Searchers - Dismantled', Rouge, Issue 7, 2004 
• Shigehiko Hasumi, 'John Ford, or The Eloquence of Gesture', Rouge, 2005
• James Hawko, 'John Ford's The Horse Soldiers', Senses of Cinema, Issue 37, 2005
• Arlene Hui, 'The Racial Frontier in John Ford’s The Searchers', Revista Complutense de Historia de América, 2004, vol. 30, 187-207 
• Peter Lehman, '"Tonight Your Director Is John Ford":The Strange Journey of Stagecoach from Screen to Radio', Play it Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes', Edited by Andrew J. Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
• Julia Leyda, 'Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility in John Ford’s The Searchers', The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 13 (2002)
• Miguel Marías, 'Ford's Depth', Rouge, Issue 7, 2004
• Cornelis Martin Renes, 'The Quiet Man and Angela’s Ashes: Hollywood Representations of Irish Emigration as Male Quest Narrative', Estudios Irlandeses , Number 2, 2007, pp. 93-106
• Gary Morris, 'The Searcher: On Ethan Edwards and John Ford's Masterpiece', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 58, 2007
• John T. Nelson, 'The Berkhofer Duality Revealed in the Western Films of John Ford and John Wayne', Madison Historical Review, Vol. 4, November 2007
• Geoffrey O'Brien, 'Young Mr. Lincoln: Here in Waiting', The Criterion Collection, February 13, 2006
• Timothy P. O'Neill, 'Two Concepts of Liberty Valance: John Ford, Isaiah Berlin, and Tragic Choice on the Frontier', Creighton Law Review, Vol. 37, 2004
• Jeffrey C. Prater, John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy: Myth or Reality?, Masters Thesis, Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, June 1989
• Art Redding, 'Built Ford Tough: John Ford and the Persistence of the American Western', La Furia Umana, No. 3, Winter 2010 
• Sam Rohdie, 'Four essays [on Painlevé, Jennings, Vigo, and Ford], Screening the Past, 25, 2009
• Norman Rosenberg, 'Young Mr. Lincoln: The Lawyer as Super-Hero', Legal Studies Forum, Volume 15, Number 3 (1991)
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘"The Doddering Relics of a Lost Cause":John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright', Rouge, No. 7, 2004
• Bill Routt, 'Ford At Fox: Part One', Screening the Past, 23, 2008 
  
• Bill Routt, 'Ford At Fox: Part Two (a)', Screening the Past, 24, 2008
• Bill Routt, 'Ford At Fox: Part Two (b)', Screening the Past, 25, 2009
• Bill Routt, 'Ford At Fox: Part Two (c)', Screening the Past, 27, 2010
• Bill Routt, 'Ford At Fox: Part Three (a)', Screening the Past, 28, 2010 
• Sean Ryder, 'Representing Ireland: Literary Adaptation and Irish Cinema', Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies 9, 1998, 119-130
• Thomas Schatz, 'Stagecoach and Hollywood's A-Western Renaissance', in John Ford's Stagecoach, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) [long extract] 
• Tom Schneller, '[Review of] Kathryn Kalinak. How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford', The Journal of film music, Volume 2, numbers 2-4, Winter 2009, 279-82
• Nicoleta Stanca, 'Hollywood Gender Representations of Irish America in the 20th Century: Maureen O’Hara and Pierce Brosnan', The Annals of Ovidius University Constanta - Philology (20/2009)
• Temenuga Trifonova, 'John Ford’s Funeral Oration: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', Senses of Cinema, Issue 45, 2007
• Phil Wagner, 'John Ford Made … Monsters? The Grotesque Tradition in Ford’s Work', Senses of Cinema, Issue 48, 2008 
• Saige Walton, '[Review of] Jim Kitses,'Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood', Senses of Cinema, Issue 38, 2006

Video Essay by Kevin B. Lee on The Sun Shines Bright (1956, John Ford) and Gertrud (1964, Carl T. Dreyer) with commentary by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Part One of Two. Part of the Shooting Down Pictures project

Video essay by Kevin B. Lee on Tobacco Road (1941, dir. John Ford), #905 (46) in the Shooting Down Pictures project.

Wheeler Winston Dixon, 'Frame By Frame - Director John Ford', UNL, August 26, 2010

Phil Peters and John Nelson, 'Studying in Western Filmmaker John Ford's Footsteps'

More about → On the art (and ideology) of John Ford's films

Lots of Film Studies PhD Theses Online

Masculine 'musculinity' (almost) all grown up -  Sylvester Stallone, in The Expendables ( Stallone, 2010). (See Yvonne Tasker's PhD on masculinity and action movies)

It was time for one of Film Studies For Free's regular visits to a research repository search-engine to see which PhD theses have been made openly accessible online since this blog last took a look.

A few of the below PDF files have been linked to before by FSFF but the vast majority have not come up in earlier searches. And there are some fabulous items here: such as Yvonne Tasker's paradigm shifting thesis on gender and action cinema, and Donato Totaro on time and the long take in the cinema. And what a truly astounding variety of topics!

• SooJeong Ahn, The Pusan International Film Festival 1996-2005: South Korean cinema in local, regional, and global context, PhD Thesis,  University of Nottingham, 2008

• Steven William Allen, A pleasure in pain: contemporary mainstream cinema's fascination with the aestheticized spectacle of the controlled body, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003

• Noor Al-Qasimi, The codes of modesty: reconfiguring the Muslim female subject, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Tom Brown, From intimate pleasures to spectacular vistas: musicality and historicity in French and American 'classical' cinema of the 1930s, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Felicia Chan, In Search of a Comparative Poetics: Cultural Translatability in Transnational Chinese Cinemas, PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2007

• Brigid S. G. Cherry, The female horror film audience : viewing pleasures and fan practices, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 1999

• Marisa Farrugia, The plight of women in Egyptian cinema (1940s 1960s), PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2002

• Dongning  Feng, Text, politics and society : literature as political philosophy in post-Mao China, PhD Thesis,  University of Stirling, 1997

• Michael Flanagan, True sons of Erin: catholic/nationalist ideology and the politics of adventure in Our Boys 1914-32, PhD Thesis, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2006

• Mary Gillan, In the shadow of the church: Irish and Quebec cinema, PhD Thesis, Dublin City University, 2009

• Leighton Grist, Authorship and context: the films of Martin Scorsese 1963-1977, PhD Thesis,      University of Warwick, 1996

• Henrik Gustafsson, Out of Site: Landscape and Cultural Reflexivity in New Hollywood Cinema 1969-1974, PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2007 and errata

• Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, Early Discourses on Colour and Cinema : Origins, Functions, Meanings, PhD Thesis,  Stockholm University, Sweden, 2006

• Timothy John Hollins, The presentation of politics : the place of party publicity, broadcasting and film in British politics, 1918-1939, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1981, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

• Christopher James Homewood, From Baader to Prada The Representation of Urban Terrorism in German-Language Film, PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2008

• Claire Jenkins, Family entertainment: representations of the American family in contemporary Hollywood cinema,   PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2009

• Krzysztof Jozajtis, Religion and film in American culture: the birth of a nation, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 2001

• Abdelrhaffar Bourkiba Larbi, Parody and ideology: The case of Othello, PhD Thesis, Universitat de València, 2005

• Barbara Lehin, Cinema and society: Thatcher's Britain and Mitterand's France, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003

• Elaine Lennon, The screenplays of Robert Towne 1960-2000, PhD Thesis, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2009

• Maasilta Mari, African Carmen. Transnational Cinema as an Arena for Cultural Contradictions, PhD Thesis, University of Tampere, 2007

• Laurent Marie, The French Communist Party and French cinema 1944-1999, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2000

• Sara Martin Alegre, More human than human: aspects of monstrosity in the films and novels in english of the 1980s and 1990s, PhD Thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1996, (chapters are: 1 Fascinating Bodies: The New Iconography of Monstrosity; 2 Old Monsters, New Monsters: Vision and Re-Vision From Screen Adaptation to Novelization; 3 Nostalgia for the Monster: Mythical Monsters and Freaks; 4 Evil and Monstrosity: The Moral Monster, 5 The Politics of Monstrosity: The Monsters of Power; 6: Frankenstein's Capitalist Heirs: The Uses of Making Monsters; 7 Gendered Monstrosity: The Monstrous-Feminine and the New Woman Saviour and 8 Little Monsters?: Children and Monsters)

• Anthony T.  McKenna, Joseph E. Levine: showmanship, reputation and industrial practice 1945-1977, PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2008

• Christopher Meir,  Underwriting national sovereignty?: policy, the market and Scottish cinema, 1982- present, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Douglas Morrey, Jean-Luc Godard and the other history of cinema, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2002

• Fabio Parasecoli, Food and men in cinema: an exploration of gender in blockbuster movies, Universität Hohenheim, 2009

• Louise Ann Parsons, An analysis of 'The Gold Diggers' (1983) by Sally Potter: feminist film, Julia Kristeva and revolutionary poetics, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1994, Vol. 1 and Vol 2

• Martin Luther Patrick, The myth of the Black male beast in postclassical American cinema: ‘Forging’ stereotypes and discovering Black masculinities, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009

• Anna Sofia Rossholm, Reproducing Languages, Translating Bodies : Approaches to Speech, Translation and Cultural Identity in Early European Sound Film, PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2006

• Trevor Ryan, Labour and the media in Britain 1929-1939: a study of the attitudes of the Labour movement towards the new media, film and radio, and of its attempts to use them for political purposes,  PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1986, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

• Alice Stanley, Representations of sexuality in the films of Francois Ozon, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2009

• Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995

• Gewain Francis Henry Tickell, Homelands and the representation of cultural and political identity in selected South-Asian texts, 1857 to the present, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1998

• Donato Totaro, Time and the long take in The Magnificent Ambersons, Ugetsu and Stalker, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001

• Louise Ann Williams, Masculinity on the run: history, nation and subjectivity in contemporary mainland Chinese cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2004

• Leila Wimmer, The French reception of British cinema, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2006

More about → Lots of Film Studies PhD Theses Online

Routledge Film Studies free online: Celebrity and Stardom; European Cinema; Race and Film; and Audience and Spectatorship

Update at 14.33 BST: The PDF files linked to here are currently not working. Will sort out and update as soon as possible. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

While it is often the emergence of exceptions that proves rules, the very existence of Film Studies For Free shows that there might occasionally be such a thing as a free lunch.

At the same time, this wily blog is certainly no purist when it comes to campaigning for Open Access in scholarly publishing. FSFF's inbuilt pragmatism means that it is always very happy to pass on news of the experiments of otherwise 'closed' or 'subscription only' academic publishers with marketing strategies involving limited free online access to their scholarly publications.

While there is, as yet, no challenger on the horizon to Intellect's extensive championing of the Film Studies freebie, publishing giant Routledge is currently offering up occasional free 'article collections' for particular subjects. Their Film Studies collection is focused on the following four key themes: Celebrity and Stardom; European Cinema; Race and Film; and Audience and Spectatorship.

Free access to the below articles in their current collection will last until December 31, 2010, so do be sure to download them before then.

• Daniel Allington, '“How Come Most People Don't See It?”: Slashing the Lord of the Rings', Social Semiotics, 17: 1, 2007: 43 — 62

• Matthias De Groof, 'Black Film Label: Negritude and Cinema', Third Text, 24: 2, 2010: 249 — 262

• Chris Holmlund, (2010) 'Celebrity, ageing and Jackie Chan: middle-aged Asian in transnational action', Celebrity Studies, 1: 1, 2010: 96 — 112

• Luke McKernan, 'A fury for seeing: Cinema, audience and leisure in London in 1913', Early Popular Visual Culture, 6: 3, 2008: 271 — 280

• Andrew L. Mendelson, 'On the function of the United States paparazzi: mosquito swarm or watchdogs of celebrity image control and power', Visual Studies, 22: 2, 2007: 169 — 183

• Dorota Ostrowska, 'Languages and Identities in the Contemporary European Cinema', Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 15: 1, 2007: 55 — 65

• Stephen Sharot, 'The ‘New Woman’, star personas, and cross-class romance films in 1920s America', Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2010, 73–86'

• Darko Štrajn, 'Identity in a notion of the Eastern and Western European cinema', New Review of Film and Television Studies, 6: 1, 2008: 41 — 50

• Keyan G. Tomaselli, 'Class and Ideology: Reflections in South African Cinema', Critical Arts, 1: 1, 1980: 1 — 13

More about → Routledge Film Studies free online: Celebrity and Stardom; European Cinema; Race and Film; and Audience and Spectatorship

Australian national cinema studies

Image from Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009)

Film Studies For Free presents its whopping and interdisciplinary list of scholarly links to online and openly accessible studies of one of its favourite national cinemas, that of Australia. A passable effort for a Pom website, it hopes you agree.

There are some veritably beaut resources here, but FSFF would especially like to flag up one great, but time-limited, free download opportunity: Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand (eds.), Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2010)

• Martha Ansara and Lisa Milner, 'The Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit: the forgotten frontier of the fifties', Metro Magazine vol. 119, pp. 28-39 
• Pieter Aquilia, 'Wog Drama and ‘White Multiculturalists’: The Role of Non Anglo-Australian Film and Television Drama in Shaping a National Identity', originally published in Ruinard and Tilley eds. Fresh Cuts: Journal of Australian Studies no. 67, St Lucia, UQP, 2000
• Susan Barber, 'Runaway, Negligent and Abusive mothers: Alternate mother – daughter relationships in Australian Cinema', Communications, Civics, Industry – ANZCA2007 Conference Proceedings
• Susan Barber, 'Creative Disabilities and Vulnerable Bodies In Women In The Bush', Conference Proceedings, ANZCA, 2006
• Katherine Biber, 'The Threshold Moment: Masculinity at Home and on the Road in Australian Cinema', LIMINA, Volume 7, 2001 
• Christine Boman, '"Let’s get her": Masculinities and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Australian Drama and its Film Adaptations', Journal of Australian Studies, 76: 2003
• Kate Bowles, 'All the evidence is that Cobargo is slipping’: An ecological approach to rural cinema-going', Film Studies, Issue 10, Spring 2007
• Harvey Broadbent, '“A simple epic”: Gallipoli and the Australian media',United Service 61 (1) March 2010
• David Carter, The Empire Dies Back: Britishness in Contemporary Australian Culture', Pacific and American Studies, Vol. 9, 2009
• Felicity Collins, 'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 276–286
• Robert Connolly, 'Embracing Innovation: a new methodology for feature film production in Australia', AFTRS: Centre for Screen Business, February 2008
• Joy Damousi, '“The Filthy American Twang”: Elocution, the Advent of American “Talkies,” and Australian Cultural Identity', The American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 2, April 2007
• Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon, Talking and Listening in The Age of Modernity: Essays on the history of sound (ANU E Press, 2007)
• Leanne Downing, 'Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium', M/C Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 6, December 2006
• Kirsty Duncanson, 'The Scene of the Crime: The Uneasy Figuring of Anglo-Australian Sovereignty in the Landscape of Lantana', Law Text Culture, Vol. 13, 2009
• Kirsty Duncanson, Catriona Elder, and Murray Pratt, 'Entanglement and the Modern Australian Rhythm Method: Lantana’s Lessons in Policing Sexuality and Gender', Portal Vol., 1 No. 1 (2004)
• Katie Ellis, 'Isolation and Companionship: Disability in Australian (Post) Colonial Cinema', Wagadu Volume 4 Summer 2007 • Intersecting Gender and Disability Perspectives in Rethinking Postcolonial Identities
• Katie Ellis, 'Disrupting Strength, Power and Perfect Bodies: Disability as Narrative Prosthesis in 1990s Australian National Cinema', Nebula, 7.1/7.2, June 2010
• John James Emerson, The Representation of the Colonial Past in French and Australian Cinema, from 1970 to 2000, PhD Thesis, Department of French Studies and Centre for European Studies and General Linguistics, University of Adelaide, South Australia, July 2002
• Helen Forscher, Animals in the landscape :an analysis of the role of the animal image in representations of identity in selected Australian feature films from 1971 to 2001, PhD Thesis, Bond University, 2008
• Warwick Frost, 'From Dead Heart to Red Heart: Developing the Destination Image of the Australian Outback',  Monash University, Department of Management Working Paper Series, October 2004
• Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand (eds.), Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2010) free download for a limited time only
• Ben Goldsmith, 'Australian National Cinema', Australian Policy Online, February 2007
  
• Lisa Gye, 'How can you be found when no-one knows that you are missing? [on Baz Luhrmann's Australia and McLean's Wolf Creek] Fibreculture Journal, Issue 15, 2009
• David Headon, 'Filming the Legends of Phar Lap and the Don — the Who, What, Where and When', Sporting Traditions, Vol. 15, no. 1, November 1998
• Alice Healy, '“Impossible Speech” and the Burden of Translation: Lilian’s Story from Page to Screen', JASAL 5, 2006
• Andrew Jakubowicz,'Australian (Dis(Contents: Film, Mass Media and Multiculturalism', n F Rizvi and S Gunew (eds) Arts for a Multicultural Australia: Issues and Strategies, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2004)
• Anthony Lambert, 'Arresting Metaphors: Anti-Colonial Females in Australian Cinema', Postcolonial Text, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2005
• Anthony Lambert, 'Movement within a Filmic Terra Nullius: Woman, Land and Identity in Australian cinema', Balayi: Journal of Colonialism, Law and Culture, 2:1, pp 7-17, 2000
• Anthony Lambert, '(Re)Producing Country: Mapping Multiple Australias', Space and Culture, 13.3, 2010 
• Anthony Lambert and Catherine Simpson, 'Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland', M/C Journal, Vol. 11, No. 5, 2008
• Anthony Lambert, 'Landless White Women: Tracking a Non-Aboriginal Landscape Tradition in Australian Cinema', published in Metro, 163, Dec 2009 
• Anthony Lambert, 'White Aborigines: Women, Space, Mobility', Chapter in Diasporas of Australian Cinema (Intellect, 2009)
• Anthony Lambert, 'Mediating crime, mediating culture: Nationality, femininity, corporeality and territory in the Schapelle Corby drugs case', Crime Media Culture 2008; 4; 237
• Anthony Lambert, 'Woman as Cure: Cynthia, Praise and Cinematic Politics of Difference', Metro Magazine No. 124/125
• Raffaele Lampugnani, 'Comedy and Humour, Stereotypes and the Italian Migrant in Mangiamele’s Ninety Nine Per Cent', FULGOR (Flinders University Languages Group Online Review), Volume 3, Issue 1, December 2006
• Suzanne Langford , 'In Search of an Australian Soul: Reflections on Religion and Spirituality in Rabbit-Proof Fence and Japanese Story', in Eternal Sunshine of the Academic Mind: Essays on Religion and Film, edited by Christopher Hartney (Sydney Studies in Religion 2009)
• Pat Laughren, Debating Australian Documentary Production Prolicy: Some Practitioner perspectives', Media International Australia, Vol. 2008 (129), pp. 116-128
• Pat Laughren, 'Australian Documentary: Notes on the State of the Art of the Art of the State in the 1960s', ACUADS 2009 Conference: Interventions in the Public Domain
• David Lowe, 'An Outlaw Industry: Bushrangers on the big screen: 1906-1993', self-published, March 1995
• Sean Maher, 'The internationalisation of Australian film and television through the 1990s', Australian Film Commission Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane 2004 
• Martin Mantle, 'Disability, Heroism and Australian National Identity', M/C Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008
• Adrian Martin, excerpt from 'Introduction', The Mad Max Movies (Sydney: Currency Press/Australian Screen Classics, 2003)
• Greg McCarthy, 'Australian Cinema and the Spectres of Post- Coloniality: Rabbit-Proof Fence, Australian Rules, The Tracker and Beneath Clouds', London Papers in Australian Studies No. 8, 2004
• Greg McCarthy, 'The Obstinate Memory in Australian Films', Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference University of Tasmania, Hobart 29 September — 1 October 2003 
• Jordi McKenzie, 'Stable Distribution and Paretian Tails: Australian Box Office Revenue Evidence', AFTRS Media, April 23, 2007
• Jordi McKenzie and Nicolas De Roos, '‘Cheap Tuesdays’ and Estimating Movie Demand: An Empirical Analysis of the Australian Cinema Industry', Discipline of Economics, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006
• Trevor Melksham, 'What Manner of Men are These? Peter Weir’s Gallipoli as an Expression of an Australian Civil Religion', in Eternal Sunshine of the Academic Mind: Essays on Religion and Film, edited by Christopher Hartney (Sydney Studies in Religion 2009)
• Toby Miller, The Dawn of an Imagined Community: Australian Sport on Film', Sporting Traditions 7, no. 1. (1990): 48–59
• Lisa Milner, ‘Commos and ratbags: the origins of trade union cinema in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 60, 1999, pp. 133-139 
• Lisa Milner, 'Kenny and Australian cinema in the Howard era', in H Radner and P Fossen (eds), Remapping cinema, remaking history: XIVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand. Conference Proceedings. Volume Two: Selected Full Refereed Papers , Dunedin, New Zealand, 27-30 November, Department of Media, Film and Communication, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, pp. 171-181
• Tony Mitchell, '“Wogs still out of work": Australian television comedy as colonial discourse', Australasian Drama Studies, No. 20, 1992, 119-133
• Albert Moran and Errol Vieth, 'Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema', Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts, No. 6, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford 2005 (long exceprt)
• Meaghan Morris, 'The Man from Hong Kong in Sydney, 1975', in Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (eds), Literature and Culture in the New, New World, pp. 235 -266, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Committee on Australian, Studies, 2004
• Caroline M. Pascoe, Screening Mothers: Representations of motherhood in Australian films from 1900 to 1988, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, September 1998
• Mariacristina Petillo, 'Translating Australian Cinema for an Italian Audience The bloody case of Ned Kelly and Picnic at Hanging Rock', inTRAlinea, Vol. 12, 2010
• Ingo Petzke, 'Phillip Noyce', Humanities & Social Sciences papers, Bond University 2006
• Jonathan Pickering. 'Globalisation: A Threat to Australian Culture?', Multicultural Austrlia Research Library, November 2004
• Nick Prescott, '“All we see and all we seem...” – Australian Cinema and National Landscape', Understanding Cultural Landscapes Symposium, 11-15 July 2005
• Fiona Probyn, 'An Ethics of Following and the No Road Films: Trackers, Followers and Fanatics', Australian Humanities Review, Issue 37, December 2005
• Gaetano Rando, 'Migrant images in Italian Australian movies and documentaries', AltreItalie, 16, luglio-dicembre 1997
• Suneeti Rekhari, 'Film Representation and the Exclusion of Aboriginal Identity: Examples from Australian Cinema', TASA & SAANZ Joint Conference 2007, Refereed Papers, 4-7 December 2007 Auckland, New Zealand
• Alan Rosen, Garry Walter, Tom Politis and Michael Shortland, 'From shunned to shining: doctors, madness and psychiatry in Australian and New Zealand cinema', Medical Journal of Australia, 1997
• Mark David Ryan, 'Whither culture? Australian horror films and the limitations of cultural policy', Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy (No 133), 2009, pp. 43-55  
• Mark David Ryan, 'At Breaking Point? Challenges for Australian Film Policy through the Lens of Genre (horror) Films', ANZCA09 Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship. Brisbane, July 2009 
• Mark David Ryan (2010) 'Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse', Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24(6)
• Olga Seco Salvador, 'Strictly Ballroom (1991): Departure from Traditional Discourses or Veiled Confirmation of old National Encouragement Mechanisms?'miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies 32 (2005): pp. 103-114
• Catherine Simpson, 'Antipodean Automobility and Crash: Treachery, Trespass and Transformation of the Open Road', Australian Humanities Journal Issue 39-40, September 2006 
• Brian Tecies, 'Transformative Soundscapes: Innovating De Forest Phonofilms Talkies in Australia', Scope, Issue 1, February 2005
• Keyan Tomaselli, 'The South African and Australian Film Industries: A Comparison', Culture, Communication and Media Studies, 2007
• David Thomas, Extraordinary Undercurrents: Australian Cinema, Genre and the Everyday. PhD Thesis, School of Media, Communication and Culture Murdoch University 2006
• Deborah Tudor, 'Cultural Intersections in Early Australian Sound Films: Rangle River (1936)', Democratic Communique, 19, Spring 2004
• Deb Verhoeven, 'Wool blend: Sheep and the Australian social fabric', from Sheep and the Australian Cinema (MUP Academic Monograph Series, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2006)
• Susan Ward, 'National Cinema or Creative Industries? Film Policy in Transition', Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 112 — August 2004
• B. Yecies, 'Failures and successes: local and national Australian sound innovations, 1924-1929. Screening The Past: An International, Refereed, Electronic Journal of Visual Media and History, (16), 2004

More about → Australian national cinema studies