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Great Cinematic Performances Volume 2: International
Edited by Murray Pomerance and Kyle Stevens
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Book Presentation:
Analyses what makes an acting performance excellent, through a range of examples from world cinema
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 second volume focuses on international cinema, and includes case studies of key performances from actors like Ingrid Bergman, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nikolai Cherkassov, Alec Guinness, Setsuko Hara, Isabelle Huppert, Peter Lorre, Madhubala, Anna Magnani, Toshirô Mifune, and Choi Min Sik, amongst many others.
Read the introduction (pdf)
Contributors
• Ulka Anjaria, Brandeis University
• Janet Bergstrom, UCLA
• Hye Seung Chung, Colorado State University
• Corey K. Creekmur, University of Iowa
• Adrian Danks, RMIT University, Melbourne
• Nick Davis, Northwestern University
• David Desser, University of Illinois
• David Scott Diffrient, Colorado State University
• Victoria Duckett, Deakin University, Melbourne
• Jason Jacobs, University of Queensland
• Alexia Kannas, RMIT University, Melbourne
• Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh
• Gina Marchetti, Independent Scholar
• Douglas McFarland, Flagler College, Saint Augustine
• Adrienne L. McLean, University of Texas at Dallas
• Jerry Mosher, California State University, Long Beach
• Karla Oeler, Stanford University
• R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University
• Homer B. Pettey, University of Arizona
• Murray Pomerance, Ryerson University
• Sergio Rigoletto, University of Oregon
• Kyle Stevens, Appalachian State University
• Aaron Taylor, University of Lethbridge
• Alison Taylor, Bond University, Queensland
• Dolores Tierney, University of Sussex
• Noah Tsika, Queens College, City University of New York
• Timotheus Vermeulen, University of Oslo
About the authors:
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.
Press Reviews:
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
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
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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The Other Hollywood Renaissance (2020)
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Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice (2001)
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