Film Studies

Using film theory and current criticism, White traces the figure of woman in the work of Max Ophuls.

Teresa De Lauretis makes a bold and orginal argument for the renewed relevance of the Freudian theory of drives, through close readings of texts ranging from cinema and literature to psychoanalysis and cultural theory.

Hollywood's depiction of gays and lesbians has almost always been stereotypical, from the extremely effeminate characters to the homicidal homosexuals. This comprehensive filmography to homosexual characters in mainstream movies, 1914-1992, includes full cast and credits, production information, reviews, and an analysis of the film with an essay blending critical commentary and a synopsis of each film.

Since its publication in 1990, "Gender Trouble" has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture.

The essential history of queer theory The reclamation of the term queer over the last several decades marked a shift in the study of sexuality from a focus on supposedly essential categories such as gay and lesbian, to more fluid notions of sexual identity.

About feminism and motion pictures.

'Understanding Movies' is designed to help students analyse movies with precision and technical sophistication. Its focus is on formalism - how the forms of the film create meaning. It is updated with recent films and personalities for students.

Here Cavell demonstrates that "the melodrama of the unknown woman" genre shares a surprising number and weave of concerns with comedies. Cavell provides close readings of four definitive melodramas: Letter from an Unknown Woman, Gaslight, Now Voyager, and Stella Dallas. The women in these melodramas, like women in comedies, demand equality, shared education, and transfiguration, exemplifying for Cavell a moral perfectionism he identifies as Emersonian. These melodramas trace the woman's recognition that in this quest she is isolated. Here Cavell unites his two loves, using detailed and perceptive musings on melodrama to reflect on philosophical problems of skepticism, psychoanalysis, and perfectionism.

Employing Freudian psychoanalysis, Christian Metz explores the nature of cinematic spectatorship and looks at the operations of meaning in the film text. NB: The subject for this book is film and not performance. However, there is no film on your list of subjects.

Coined in the early 1990s to describe a burgeoning film movement, "New Queer Cinema" has turned the attention of film theorists, students, and audiences to the proliferation of intelligent, stylish, and daring work by lesbian and gay filmmakers within independent cinema and to the infiltration of "queer" images and themes into the mainstream. Provides a definitive and highly readable guide to the development of this important and controversial film movement. New Queer Cinema explores the aesthetic, sociocultural, political, and, necessarily, commercial investments of the movement. It is the first full-length study of recent developments in queer cinema that combines indispensable discussions of central issues with exciting new work by key writers.

This collection brings together the work of both film scholars and queer theorists to advance a more sophisticated notion of queer film criticism. While the "politics of representation" has been the focus of much previous gay and lesbian film criticism, the contributors to Out Takes employ the approaches of queer theory to move beyond conventional readings and to reexamine aspects of the cinematic gaze in relation to queer desire and spectatorship. The essays examine a wide array of films, including Calamity Jane, Rear Window, The Hunger, Heavenly Creatures, and Bound , and discuss such figures as Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alfred Hitchcock. Divided into three sections, the first part reconsiders the construction of masculinity and male homoerotic desire--especially with respect to the role of women--in classic cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. The second section offers a deconstructive consideration of lesbian film spectatorship and lesbian representation. Part three looks at the historical trajectory of independent queer cinema, including works by H.D., Kenneth Anger, and Derek Jarman. By exploring new approaches to the study of sexuality in film, Out Takes will be useful to scholars in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and cinema studies. Contributors. Bonnie Burns, Steven Cohan, Alexander Doty, Lee Edelman, Michelle Elleray, Jim Ellis, Ellis Hanson, D. A. Miller, Eric Savoy, Matthew Tinkcom, Amy Villarejo, Jean Walton

A brilliantly original exploration of the interface between feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics and film theory.

A new edition of Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking collection of essays, originally published in 1989. In an extensive introduction to this second edition, Mulvey looks back at the historical and personal contexts for her famous article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema , and reassesses her theories in the light of new technologies.

The first edition of "Women in Film Noir" (1978) assembled a group of scholars and critics committed to understanding the cinema in terms of gender, sexuality, politics, psychoanalysis and semiotics. This edition is expanded to include further essays which reflect the renewed interest in Film Noir. Exploring "neo-noir", postmodernism and other contemporary trends, new essays offer readings of, among others, "Bound" and "Basic Instinct", broadening the scope of the book to include questions of race and homosexuality.