Overview

The first truly interdisciplinary analysis to link Douglas Sirk's striking visual aesthetic to key movements in twentieth century art and architecture, this book reveals how the exaggerated artifice of Sirk's formal style emerged from his detailed understanding of the artistic debates that raged in 1920s Europe and the post-war United States. With detailed case studies of Final Chord and All That Heaven Allows, Victoria Evans demonstrates how Sirk attempted to dissolve the boundaries of cinema by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into the colour, composition and setting of many of his most well-known films. Treating Sirk's oeuvre as a continuum between his German and American periods, Evans argues that his mise-en-scene was the result of an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue, and illuminates the broader cultural context in which his films appeared by establishing links between archival documents, Modernist manifestos and the philosophical writings of his peers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Victoria L. Evans
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 5.10cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.460kg
ISBN:  

9781474409391

ISBN 10:   1474409393
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   02 June 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsTable of ContentsList of FiguresIntroduction PART ONE-Sirk and the Visual Arts Thinking with the Heart: Sirk and Pictorial ReceptionI. From the Haptic and Optic to the Affective and BrechtianII. Going Beyond Melodrama’s Visual Metaphors Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Magnificent Obsession and the Influence of Modernist PaintingI. Some Popular Mid-Century American Responses to Modernist ArtII. Cinema and Painting: Composing other Models PART TWO-The Shock of the New: Traces of Modernity The Invasion of Machines and Machine Culture I. Softening the Armoured Heart: Douglas Sirk's The Tarnished AngelsII. Two Conflicting Views of Modern Technology Imitation of Life and the Depiction of Suburban SpaceI. Some Limitations of the Typical American SuburbII. Stahl Versus Sirk and the Emergence of the Colour Line PART THREE-Two Architectural Case Studies Final Chord and ""Die Neue Welt"": The Mise-en-Scène of AufbruchI. Visions of Modernity: Interpreting the New York SkylineII. The Weight of History: Germany's Imperial MonumentsIII. Determining Final Chord’s ""New World"": The Textual EvidenceIV. Fashion or Revolution: Towards a Non-Bourgeois Interior Back to the Future: Architecture and All that Heaven AllowsI. Modernism Here and There, Now and Then: Deciphering the Old MillII. The Mill as Architectural Art and the Selling of All That Heaven AllowsIII. Stoningham as Mausoleum: a Repository of Dead ConventionsIV. The Eye of Power: Who is Looking at Whom in the SuburbsV. Et in Arcadia Ego: The Denouement of All That Heaven Allows Bibliography

Reviews

It has been said that many books should be written on any one auteur. Victoria L. Evans in Douglas Sirk: Aesthetic Modernism and the Culture of Modernity underscores this point. At once elegant and rigorous, Evans's attention to aesthetic, art-historical, and architectural detail make returning to Douglas Sirk a journey in intellectual delights. This book is a treasure for film studies.--Professor David A. Gerstner, CUNY

It has been said that many books should be written on any one auteur. Victoria L. Evans in Douglas Sirk: Aesthetic Modernism and the Culture of Modernity underscores this point. At once elegant and rigorous, Evans's attention to aesthetic, art-historical, and architectural detail make returning to Douglas Sirk a journey in intellectual delights. This book is a treasure for film studies. -- Professor David A. Gerstner, CUNY

Author Information

Dr Victoria Evans is the main programmer for the Dunedin Film Society and an organiser for the New Zealand International Film Festival. She is also on the national management committee of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies. She received her phD from the University of Otago in 2008.

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