Written on the Wind (1956) is one of classical Hollywood's most striking films andranks among Douglas Sirk's finest achievements. An intense melodrama aboutan alcoholic playboy who marries the woman his best friend secretly loves,the film is highly stylised, psychologically complex, and marked by Sirk'scharacteristic charting of the social realities of 1950s America.This first single study of Written on the Wind reassesses the film's artisticherit...

Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 black comedy-melodrama Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown established its director as one of the most exciting of European film-making talents. An often hilarious study of sexual mores, Women on the Verge has a central character, Pepa (Carmen Maura), as warm and richly drawn as any modern film heroine. Made strong and self-reliant by suffering in a troubled relationship, Pepa is the centre of a network of lovers, friends and family who repres...

Top Hat is the first volume to spotlight this classic Hollywood film, probing the musical genre, notions of romance and subjectivity, as well as the contested relations between the sexes.Offers a detailed analysis of one of Hollywood's greatest musicals, including a comprehensive survey of the film's production, promotion and reception, all measured against the background of 1930s socio-political contexts in the USAExplores the musical genre and questions o...

This text analyses director Pedro Almodovar's insights into gender, sexuality and subjectivity in his film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The author draws on a range of psychoanalytic and critical concepts and sees the film as an account of the often tyrannical spell of sexual desire, of the anxieties of relationships and families, but also of the possibilities of personal liberation. Peter William Evans also discusses the recent history of Spain and ties the film's co...

This text ranges widely over key films and moments from stages of Luis Bunuel's career. It locates and re-appraises Bunuel's films with particular emphasis on the national cinemas and varied cultures with which he was identified.

“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le CarréNothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if yo...

The follow-up and companion volume to the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor—a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying, and funOf all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and...

The renowned philosopher and political theorist presents a summation of his influential work in this series of Columbia University lectures.A pioneer in the fields of modern linguistics and cognitive science, Noam Chomsky is also one of the most avidly read political theorist of our time. In this series of lectures, Chomsky presents more than half a century of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas.In precise yet accessible language, Chomsky e...

Richard Schickel's text, combining critical analysis and a re-interpretation of all the available biographical information, masterfully maps the intersections where a great star's personal history and his screen personality met in a style as elegant, graceful and witty as the actor himself.

Romantic Comedy offers an introduction to the analysis of a popular but overlooked film genre. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining iconography, narrative patterns, and ideology. Chapters discuss important subgroupings within the genre: screwball sex comedy and the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. A final chapter traces the lasting influence of these earlier forms within current romantic comedies. Films include: Pillow Talk

Film Noir explores the murky world of a genre responsible for many of film's most enduring images. Mark Bould discusses problems of definition and the often ambiguous nature of film noir and looks at modern films that could be called neo-noir. Iconic and enduring, film noir attracted great stars (Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum, Lancaster), many of the best directors of the era (Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Hawks, Siodmak, Welles) and this book is an indispensible guide to this popular genre....

**A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award"The definitive book about Depression culture for our time." —San Francisco Chronicle**Hailed as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, this vibrant portrait of 1930s culture masterfully explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of distressed Americans during the Great Depression. Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called "one ...