Overview

What actors do on-screen is a fascination for audiences all over the world. Indeed, the cultural visibility of movie stars is so pronounced that stardom has often been regarded as intrinsic to the medium's specificity. Yet not all great cinematic performances are star turns, and so, what really makes a cinematic performance good, interesting, or important has been a neglected topic in film criticism. This two-volume set presents detailed interpretations of singular performances by several of the most compelling actors in cinema history, asking in many different and complementary ways what makes performance meaningful, how it reflects a director's style, as well as how it contributes to the development of national cinemas and cultures. Whether noting the precise ways actors shape film narrative, achieve emotional effect, or move toward political subversion, the essays in these books innovate new approaches to studying screen performance as an art form and cultural force. This volume focuses on American cinema, including case studies of key performances from actors like Bette Davis, Irene Dunne, Whoopi Goldberg, Cary Grant, Oscar Isaac, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Sidney Poitier, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sellers, Kristen Stewart, and Ethel Waters, amongst many others.

Full Product Details

Author:   Murray Pomerance (Professor, n/a) ,  Kyle Stevens (Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Weight:   0.601kg
ISBN:  

9781474417006

ISBN 10:   1474417000
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   15 January 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Kyle Stevens and Murray Pomerance1--Ethel Waters in The Member of the Wedding, Anna Everett2--Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth, Steven Rybin3--Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, Adrienne L. McLean4--Janet Gaynor in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Janet Bergstrom5--Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter, Homer B. Pettey6--Bette Davis in Dangerous, Lucy Fischer7--James Stewart in Vertigo, William Rothman8--Carole Lombard in To Be or Not to Be, Alex Clayton9--James Mason in Lolita, Rebecca Bell-Metereau10--Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun, George Toles11--Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success, John Bruns12--Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther, Daniel Varndell13--Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, R. Barton Palmer14--Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy, Murray Pomerance15--Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night, Frances Gateward16--Gene Hackman in The Conversation, Brenda Austin-Smith17--Gena Rowlands in Gloria, David Greven18--Jack Nicholson in The Passenger [Professione: Reporter], Rick Warner19--Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Jason Jacobs20--Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye, Douglas McFarland21--Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco, Tim Vermeulen22--Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple, Lester D. Friedman23--Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine, Shonni Enelow24--Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year, Charles Ramírez Berg25--Kristin Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria, Elliott LoganContributors

Reviews

"Mustering a wide array of voices and perspectives, these game-changing volumes provide a welcome scholarly corrective to the scandalous undervaluation of actors, acting, and performance that has prevailed in cinema studies for far too long. This collection promises to shape discourse on screen acting for many years to come.--David Sterritt, Maryland Institute College of Art Pomerance and Stevens's collection adds a significant international scope to the field. In volume 1, America, standouts include Anna Everett on Ethel Waters's resistance in The Member of the Wedding and Lucy Fischer on Bette Davis and metaperformance in the studio era. In volume 2, International, performances from Western Europe to Asia are examined. Noteworthy among the contributions are Douglas McFarland on Toshiro Mifune, Kyle Stevens on Michel Serrault in La cage aux folles, and Noah Tsika on Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde in Mortal Inheritance.'--S. Mabee, Ozarks Technical Community College ""CHOICE"""

'Pomerance and Stevens's collection adds a significant international scope to the field. In volume 1, America, standouts include Anna Everett on Ethel Waters's resistance in The Member of the Wedding and Lucy Fischer on Bette Davis and metaperformance in the studio era. In volume 2, International, performances from Western Europe to Asia are examined. Noteworthy among the contributions are Douglas McFarland on Toshiro Mifune, Kyle Stevens on Michel Serrault in La cage aux folles, and Noah Tsika on Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde in Mortal Inheritance.'--S. Mabee, Ozarks Technical Community College CHOICE

Pomerance and Stevens's collection adds a significant international scope to the field. In volume 1, America, standouts include Anna Everett on Ethel Waters's resistance in The Member of the Wedding and Lucy Fischer on Bette Davis and metaperformance in the studio era. In volume 2, International, performances from Western Europe to Asia are examined. Noteworthy among the contributions are Douglas McFarland on Toshiro Mifune, Kyle Stevens on Michel Serrault in La cage aux folles, and Noah Tsika on Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde in Mortal Inheritance. -- S. Mabee, Ozarks Technical Community College, CHOICE

Author Information

Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is the author of The Film Cheat: Screen Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (2020), Grammatical Dreams (2020), Virtuoso: Film Performance and the Actor’s Magic (2019), A Dream of Hitchcock (2019), and Cinema, If You Please: The Memory of Taste, the Taste of Memory (2018), among many other volumes, and editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books including The Other Hollywood Renaissance (2020). He edits the “Horizons of Cinema” series at SUNY Press and the “Techniques of the Moving Image” series at Rutgers. A Voyage with Hitchcock and Color It True: Impressions of Cinema are both forthcoming. Kyle Stevens is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Appalachian State University. He is the author of Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism, and his essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, Critical Quarterly, Film Criticism, World Picture, as well as several edited collections. He is also editor-in-chief of New Review of Film and Television Studies.

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