|
|
| Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335 |
|
Home
|
Jacob Smith
|
Burt Reynolds
was Hollywood's top male star during the mid-1970s when, for a time, his
star image managed contradictions about gender, work, and class before
succumbing to its own inner contradictions. Much of this ideological work
was done on the level of his performances, in particular his distinctive
laugh. The work of socio-linguistics can provide a language for looking
at the laugh: an expression that exists in a fascinating gray area between
speech and gesture, and that poses a certain challenge to actors. This
study underscores the importance of star performances across media forms,
as TV talk-shows and magazine centerfolds helped to forge Reynolds' movie
persona. However, it is in a cycle of films that established Reynolds
as a major star and that constructed his "Good-Old-Boy" image,
that the contradictions in Reynolds' star image can be seen most dramatically,
most notably in the convention of the end-credit outtake reel.
|
|
Samuel Amago
Samuel Amago teaches at the
University of Notre Dame, where he is an assistant professor and fellow
of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. He has published articles
on contemporary Spanish fiction and cinema. His book, True Lies: Narrative
Self-Consciousness in the Contemporary Spanish Novel, is forthcoming.
He is beginning a new project on transnational European cinema. |
Since beginning his film career
in the early 1990s, the Catalan actor Sergi Lopez has appeared in thirty-four
films produced in Spain, France, and Great Britain. This article investigates
the structural importance of Lopez's star persona as it is employed in
two recent European films in which he plays the charming but sinister
Spaniard, Dominik Moll's Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000) and
Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things (2002). This essay offers a brief
synthesis of some of the roots and ramifications of European cultural
prejudice, then analyzes these two films in terms of their noteworthy
focalizations on the Spanish-ness of the villian. By looking at the production
and articulation of Lopez's star persona, we can see how the actor has
embedded himself "in the imaginary and real social construct that
is Spain and the world's view of Spain" (Perriam 10), and how the
Black Legend of the Spaniard continues to perpetuate itself in contemporary
European cinema. |
|
|
Arturo Silva
Vincente Minnelli's Dream of Tony Hunter's Band Wagon's "Girl Hunt" Arturo Silva teaches film theory
and history at the Institute of Architectural Theory at the Technical
Institute, Vienna (Austria). He edited The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years
of Writing on Japan (Stonebridge Press, 2001) and has recently completed
a book on 2001 A Space Odyssey.
|
Vincente Minnelli's The Band
Wagon (1953) condludes with a sequence of four numbers, plus the famous
"The Girl Hunt," all of which appear to have no narrative connection
to anything that precedes them, or even with each other. Most accounts
of this ending write it off in a casual "that's entertainment!"
manner. But a careful reading of the elements of this long concluding
section not only clears up the "mystery of the mystery" of "The
Girl Hunt," but also gives The Band Wagon a hitherto unperceived
coherency and wholeness. This essay looks first at the film's sources
and at those four numbers, reading the whole as a bricolage of film musical
elements, including various aspects of Minnelli's career. The second part
offers a detailed reading of "The Girl Hunt," revealing it to
be a dream of the hero's desire for the heroine whos themes and images
derive from the main body of The Band Wagon's narrative. |
|
|
Interview The Dardenne Brothers at
Cannes: "We Want to Make it Live" Book Review Tom Cohen, Hitchcock's Cryptonomies:
Volume 1, Secret Agents; Volume II, War Machines |
