Table of Contents
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
List of Figures xv
1 Introduction 1Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek
Part I Approaches 11
2 Biopics and the Trembling Ethics of the Real 13Timothy Corrigan
3 Biopics and the Melodramatic Mode 23Sonia Amalia Haiduc
4 Television Biopics: Questions of Genre, Nation, and Medium 45Jonathan Bignell
5 Alexander Mackendrick’s Mary Stuart and Alan Sharp’s Burns: Two Unfilmed Scottish Biopics 61Brian Hoyle
Part II Histories 87
6 The Hollywood Biopic of the Twentieth Century: A History 89Deborah Cartmell
7 Silent Biopics 103Gregory Robinson
8 A Match Made in Heaven?: The Biopic in Pre‐Revolution Russian Cinema 125Henrik Christensen
9 The Golden Age Hollywood Biopic: The Barretts of Wimpole Street 1934–1957 147Deborah Cartmell
10 Caligula, History, and the Erotic Imagination 159I.Q. Hunter
11 Representing the Unrepresentable: The Army of Crime and Biopic Generic Conventions of Identity 191Hila Shachar
12 Nature Versus Nurture/Wilderness Versus Words: Syncretising Binaries and the Getting of Wisdom in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007) 209Melissa Croteau
Part III Sub‐biopic Genres 231
13 Fleming, Adaptation, and the Author Biopic 233Jeremy Strong
14 Partial Presidential Biography on Stage and Screen: Franklin D. Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello 247Dean J. Kotlowski
15 Can the Biopic Subjects Speak?: Disembodied Voices in The King’s Speech and The Theory of Everything 269Alexa Alice Joubin
16 Biographical Fantasia on Screen: Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, Karol Radziszewski’s MS 101, and the Strategy of Detournement 283Robert Kusek
17 The Criminal and the Yarn: Adapting and Performing Notoriety 297Imelda Whelehan
18 ‘The Man Behind the Myth’: Mr. Holmes and the Fictional Biopic 309Ashley D. Polasek
Part IV Biopic Performances 331
19 ‘She was an actress …’: Performing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady 333Christine Geraghty
20 Film (Noir) à Clef: Jailhouse Rock, A Hard Day’s Night, and the ‘Jukebox’ Biopic 353Robert Miklitsch
21 A Recipe for Life: Constructing the Biopic through New Media 375Annie Nissen
22 Performance and Prestige in the Biopic, or Stardom and Statuettes 395Colleen Kennedy‐Karpat
23 The Matter of Black Lives: Representations of Prominent Afro‐Americans in Biopics 415Lucinda Hobbs
Index 435