Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema

by John Orr

Overview

In a fresh and invigorating look at British cinema that considers film as an art form among other arts, John Orr takes a critical look at the intriguing relationship between romanticism and modernism that has been much neglected in the study of UK cinema and downplayed in the development of Western cinema. Encompassing a broad selection of films, film-makers and debates, this book brings a fresh perspective to how scholars might understand and interrogate the major traditions that have shaped British cinema history.Covering the period between 1929 and the present, this book examines outstanding directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Carol Reed, Nicholas Roeg, Terence Davies and Bill Douglas, and articulates two genres vital to British cinema - the fugitive film and the trauma film - which bridge the gap between romantic and modern forms. Two detailed chapters also assess the powerful impact of major expatriate directors like Losey, Antonioni, Polanski, Kubrick and Skolimowski on modernism in the 1960s and 1970s. Detailed critical readings explore Blackmail, The Lady Vanishes, Black Narcissus, Odd Man Out, The Passionate Friends, The Innocents, Lawrence of Arabia, The Servant, Blow-Up, A Clockwork Orange, Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man, Moonlighting, the Bill Douglas trilogy and The Long Day Closes. The book concludes with an analysis of the persistence of romantic and modernist forms in the 21st century in two recent prize-winning features, Control and Hunger.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748649372
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/20/2012
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

The late John Orr was Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh and published widely in the areas of modern culture, cinema, theatre and literature. He was also a reviewer for a wide number of periodicals and online journals including Screen, Studies in French Cinema, Film International and Senses of Cinema.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

List of figures ix

Introduction: romantics versus modernists? 1

1 1929: romantics and modernists on the cusp of sound 5

The documentary legacy: Drifters 7

The forging of the fugitive film: A Cottage on Dartmoor 11

Transgressing triangles: Piccadilly and The Manxman 14

Blackmail'and transition 18

Constructive and deconstructive: Number Seventeen 23

2 The running man: Hitchcock's fugitives and The Bourne Ultimatum 25

Jason's Waterloo: Hitchcock, Greengrass and deepest fears 25

The fugitive kind: pre-war, wartime, post-war 28

British Hitchcock: from romance thriller to post-romantic fable 32

The poetics of treachery: Dickinson and Cavalcanti 34

The triumph of the short film: Bon Voyage and Aventure malgacbe 37

Post-romantic fugitives: Stage Fright and Frenzy 40

Epilogue: the Frenzy murders 42

3 Running man 2: Carol Reed and his contemporaries 44

Fable versus romance: The Third Man and They Made Me a Fugitive 54

Reed and subterfuge: The Man Between and Our Man in Havana 57

Reed's successors 62

4 David Lean: the troubled romantic and the end of empire 64

Forgotten Lean: the Ann Todd trilogy 64

Madeleine: the perverse unveiled 70

The Sound Barrier, the faltering sublime and the end of empire 77

Enthusiast or fanatic? The paradox of Lean's 'Lawrence' 79

5 'The trauma film from romantic to modern: A Matter of Life and Death to Don't Look Now 86

Prelude: Thorold Dickinson and Anton Walbrook 88

Juxtaposition: A Matter of Life and Death and Dead of Night 89

Powellian trauma: Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room, Peeping Tom 94

Female 'madness' and modernism: The Innocents and Repulsion 101

The trauma double bill: Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man 108

The neo-romantic turn and death in Venice: Don't Look Now 110

Romantic symbol and modernist edit 112

6 Joseph Losey and Michelangelo Antonioni: the expatriate eye and the parallax view 115

Losey and Pinter: the modernist moment in The Servant and Accident 119

Coda: Providence as Resnais's riposte to Losey 128

Antonioni's parallax view: Blow- Up and The Passenger 129

What's in a title? The Passenger or Profession: Reporter 135

Coda: the native eye in Radio On 139

7 Expatriate eye 2: Stanley Kubrick and Jerzy Skolimowski 141

Freedom and fate: Barry Lyndon 148

Skolimowski and running water: or, Deep End and Cul-de-Sac 152

Rise and fall: The Shout, Moonlighting, Success is the Best Revenge 156

Bringing it all back home: Moonlighting and Success is the Best Revenge 159

8 Terence Davies and Bill Douglas: the poetics of memory 164

Mimetic modernism and family mysteries: the Douglas trilogy 167

Davies: the romantic imagist and the poetry of memory 171

Floating through space and time: The Long Day Closes 173

The past as present: The House of Mirth and The Wings of the Dove 177

9 Conclusion: into the new century 180

Select bibliography 185

Index 189

Editorial Reviews

Agreeably concise and superbly organised, with a brace of excellent stills to complement the text, this book provides an enjoyable, accessible read while also displaying intellectual rigour and insight. Highly recommended.

Choice - W. W. Dixon

Concise and superbly organized, with a brace of excellent stills to complement the text.... Highly recommended.

Choice

Orr has already written valuable books on Hitchcock's influence and on cinema and modernity. Drawing on these, he traces a dialectic between romanticism and modernism that runs through UK cinema from the beginning of the sound era to the present - often creating a vital tension within its major filmmakers. His themes and juxtapositions are never conventional: chapters on the fugitive 'running man' and the 'trauma film' introduce important new critical perspectives, and his enthusiasms are infectious. Not since Ray Durgnat's A Mirror for England (an acknowledged inspiration) has there been such a stimulating book on cinema in the British Isles.

Ian Christie

When Orr is writing about the cinema he clearly loves most (Hitchcock, Reed, Douglas, Davies, McQueen) his own fusing of modernism and romanticism comes to the fore - clear, cogent analysis with an underlying lyricism that inspires an imaginative passion in the reader."To write a generalist book about British cinema and make an impact is no easy task at these times of academic publishing plenitude in the field."There's no question that he's hit on the right dichotomy for a national cinema in which ambivalence and aesthetic timidity are the ever-present enemy."A brilliant opening gambit, however, allays fears of redundancy."The readings Orr develops from this base are mostly excellent and enlightening , especially his ideas around the fugitive film"Orr is as superb, for instance, on the choreography of person and camera movements in 'Dial M for Murder' as he is on the still camera aesthetics of Bill Douglas and the gliding musical movements in Terence Davies, his beautifully paired 'neo-romantics'."

Sight and Sound - Nick James

Romantics and Modernists retains Orr's characteristic pith and insight. What is more, with unconventional heroism it utterly dispenses with the all the notes, references, quotes and secondary evidences which buttress and clutter many a lesser tome. This is all Orr, crammed with provocative opinion and imaginative flight. It is a gem-like swansong.

Journal of British Cinema and Television - Andrew Moor

John Orr's book gives the most ambitious single-author overview of British cinema since Raymond Durgnat's ground-breaking A Mirror for England 40 years ago. Not only does Orr offer much that is fresh and illuminating on film-makers ranging from Lean and Reed, through outsiders like Losey and Polanski, to Bill Douglas and Terence Davies, but he places them in a convincing overall perspective. Anyone interested in the riches of Britain's film history will gain from reading it.

Charles Barr

Romantics and Modernists, retains Orr's characteristic pith and insight. What is more, with unconventional heroism it utterly dispenses with the all the notes, references, quotes and secondary evidences which buttress and clutter many a lesser tome. This is all Orr, crammed with provocative opinion and imaginative flight. It is a gem-like swansong.

Journal of British Cinema and Television - Andrew Moor. Manchester Metropolitan University