Mitchum, Mexico and the Good Neighbours Era
Mitchum, Mexico and the Good Neighbours Era

Author: Liam White

Publisher: Andrews UK Limited

Published: 2014-02-12

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1909183466

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Robert Mitchum was one of the most charismatic stars of the ‘classic Hollywood' era. His screen persona was the essence of cool: tough but vulnerable, accepting of his fate with languid charm and easy humour. His films have often been seen through the lens of film noir, but they had something else in common too: the characters he played in Out of the Past, The Big Steal, His Kind of Woman, Second Chance, Where Danger Lives, and Angel Face seemed irrevocably drawn to Mexico. Mitchum's sequence of films south of the border coincided with the advent of the ‘golden age’ of Mexico’s own film industry, a new cinematic wave that drew on serious artistic influences from the muralists to Sergei Eisenstein, and that was led by director Emilio Fernández and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa whose 1943 film María Candelaria, starring former Hollywood siren Dolores del Río, had won a prize at Cannes. Under the Roosevelt administration’s ‘Good Neighbour’ policy - a wartime effort to court friendly Latin American countries - Hollywood’s portrayal of Mexico changed: out went the all-purpose exoticism, where ‘south of the border’ was a metaphor for the loosening of moral and sexual standards, and in came a more nuanced approach. In this authoritative study, Liam White encourages us to take a fresh look at how Mitchum’s films broke with Hollywood convention in the way they depicted Mexico; how Mexico’s own film industry boomed, becoming the first example of ‘world cinema’ to have an impact on the post-War world; and how its success attracted significant US talent - from John Steinbeck to John Ford - to work on bi-national projects.

Jazz and Cocktails
Jazz and Cocktails

Author: Jans B. Wager

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1477312277

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Film noir showcased hard-boiled men and dangerous femmes fatales, rain-slicked city streets, pools of inky darkness cut by shards of light, and, occasionally, jazz. Jazz served as a shorthand for the seduction and risks of the mean streets in early film noir. As working jazz musicians began to compose the scores for and appear in noir films of the 1950s, black musicians found a unique way of asserting their right to participate fully in American life. Jazz and Cocktails explores the use of jazz in film noir, from its early function as a signifier of danger, sexuality, and otherness to the complex role it plays in film scores in which jazz invites the spectator into the narrative while simultaneously transcending the film and reminding viewers of the world outside the movie theater. Jans B. Wager looks at the work of jazz composers such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Chico Hamilton, and John Lewis as she analyzes films including Sweet Smell of Success, Elevator to the Gallows, Anatomy of a Murder, Odds Against Tomorrow, and considers the neonoir American Hustle. Wager demonstrates how the evolving role of jazz in film noir reflected cultural changes instigated by black social activism during and after World War II and altered Hollywood representations of race and music.

Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum

Author: Damien Love

Publisher: B.T. Batsford

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Follows one of cinema's great actors from his early days in Westerns to the end of his life. Along the way, this illustrated biography reflects on how his real life echoed the nefarious characters he played. Readers will especially enjoy the "chronoMitchology" timeline, and a "Mitchabet," the A-to-Z of the actor.

A Patriot's History of the United States
A Patriot's History of the United States

Author: Larry Schweikart

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-12-29

Total Pages: 1373

ISBN-13: 1101217782

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For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

Life Itself
Life Itself

Author: Roger Ebert

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0446584983

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Named one of the 100 greatest film books of all time by The Hollywood Reporter, this singular, warm-hearted, inspiring look at life itself is "the best thing Mr. Ebert has ever written" (Janet Maslin, New York Times). "To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out." Roger Ebert was the best-known film critic of his time. He began reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times in1967, and was the first film critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. He appeared on television for four decades. In 2006, complications from thyroid cancer treatment resulted in the loss of his abi)lity to eat, drink, or speak. But with the loss of his voice, Ebert became a more prolific and influential writer. And in Life Itself he told the full, dramatic story of his life and career. In this candid, personal history, Ebert chronicled it all: his loves, losses, and obsessions; his struggle and recovery from alcoholism; his marriage; his politics; and his spiritual beliefs. He wrote about his years at the Sun-Times, his colorful newspaper friends, and his life-changing collaboration with Gene Siskel. He shared his insights into movie stars and directors like John Wayne and Martin Scorsese. This is a story that only Roger Ebert could tell, filled with the same deep insight, dry wit, and sharp observations that his readers have long cherished,

The Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
The Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings

Author: Agustin Gurza

Publisher: Chicano Archives

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780895511485

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"The Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American vernacular recordings in existence. It contains more than 130,000 individual recordings. Many are rare, and some are one of a kind. Although border music is the focus of the collection, it also includes notable recordings of other Latin forms, including salsa, mambo, sones, and rancheras. More than 40,000 of the recordings, all from the first half of the twentieth century, have been digitized with the help of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and are available online through the University of California's Digital Library Program. Agustin Gurza explores the Frontera Collection from different viewpoints, discussing genre, themes, and some of the thousands of composers and performers whose work is contained in the archive. Throughout he discusses the cultural significance of the recordings and relates the stories of those who have had a vital role in their production and preservation. Rounding out the volume are chapters by Jonathan Clark, who surveys the recordings of mariachi ensembles, and Chris Strachwitz, the founder of the Arhoolie Foundation, who reflects on his six decades of collecting the music that makes up the Frontera Collection."--Publisher description.

Out of the Past
Out of the Past

Author: Ben Tyrer

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-08-17

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 3319309420

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This book presents a new reading of film noir through psychoanalytic theory. In a field now dominated by Deleuzian and phenomenological approaches to film-philosophy, this book argues that, far from having passed, the time for Lacan in Film Studies is only just beginning. The chapters engage with Lacanian psychoanalysis to perform a meta-critical analysis of the writing on noir in the last seven decades and to present an original theory of criticism and historiography for the cinema. The book is also an act of mourning; for a lost past of the cinema, for a longstanding critical tradition and for film noir. It asks how we can talk about film noir when, in fact, film noir doesn’t exist. The answer starts with Lacan and a refusal to relinquish psychoanalysis. Lacanian theories of retroactivity and ontology can be read together with film history, genre and narrative to show the ways in which theory and history, past and present, cinema and psychoanalysis are fundamentally knotted together. Tyrer also explores Lacan through particular noir films, such as Double Indemnity andThe Maltese Falcon — and demonstrates the possibilities for a Lacanian Film Studies (as one that engages fully with Lacan’s entire body of work) that has hitherto not been realised.

The RKO Story
The RKO Story

Author: Richard B. Jewell

Publisher: Random House Value Publishing

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13:

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RKO Radio Pictures existed in an atmosphere of almost chaos, from its optimistic beginnings in 1928 until it collapsed into ruins at the hands of Howard Hughes nearly 30 years later. Yet in that show history RKO made some of the greatest films and featured some of the finest talents ever to emerge from Hollywood.

The Western Films of Robert Mitchum
The Western Films of Robert Mitchum

Author: Gene Freese

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-11-19

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1476678499

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Robert Mitchum was--and still is--one of Hollywood's defining stars of Western film. For more than 30 years, the actor played the weary and cynical cowboy, and his rough-and-tough presence on-screen was no different than his one off-screen. With a personality fit for western-noir, Robert Mitchum dominated the genre during the mid-20th century, and returned as the anti-hero again during the 1990s before his death. This book lays down the life of Mitchum and the films that established him as one of Hollywood's strongest and smartest horsemen. Going through early classics like Pursued (1947) and Blood on the Moon (1948) to more recent cult favorites like Tombstone (1993) and Dead Man (1995), Freese shows how Mitchum's nuanced portrayals of the iconic anti-hero of the West earned him his spot in the Cowboy Hall of Fame.