The life of mise-en-scène

Visual style and British film criticism, 1946–78

Author:
John Gibbs
Search for other papers by John Gibbs in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close

This book explores the role of mise-en-scene in melodrama criticism, and considers what happened to detailed criticism as major theoretical movements emerged in the 1970s. Mise-en-scene, and other ways of conceiving visual style, has been central to so many important debates that the writing examined in the book shaped the field in enduring ways. The book provides a cross-section of the British culture and its attitudes to film. It also considers a range of important contexts, from material conditions of film viewing (and therefore criticism) to the cultural and political shifts of 1956. The book further investigates the frequently asserted connection between literary criticism and the approaches developed in Movie. It identifies the range of different approaches to interpreting mise-en-scene advanced in Movie, drawing out sections on action, camera movement and placing, connections between different parts of the film, and a range of further debates. 'Tales of Sound and Fury' is an extraordinary article, and Elsaesser's appreciation of the plastic and expressive qualities of domestic melodrama and the broader melodramatic tradition is exemplary. In the early 1970s, writing on melodrama provided some of the richest expressions of mise-en-scene criticism. The book embodies a number of approaches which were to undermine the emergent interest in the interpretation of the film style. Melodrama criticism is a crucial focus for shifts in film criticism and theory, and for this history.
eISBN:
9781526103130
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526103130
Online Publication Date:
01 Nov 2015
Abstract only
Log-in for full text
Rights and Permissions
Institutional access

 

‘Gibbs undertakes an ambitious, large-scale project of critical historiography that, despite its scope, nevertheless manifests a quality of attention to the fi ne grain of concrete detail befitting its primary subject: the best achievements of interpretive or expressive mise-en-scène criticism … Gibbs's book is one of major scope and historical ambition, covering half a century, the origins of and obstacles to the gradual invention of a critical practice, and key developments in an emerging academic discipline. Yet at every point, the book's insights achieve precision and nuance through the deft way Gibbs builds this history almost entirely by sustained, meticulous analysis of primary sources, in which the critical developments outlined above took shape. His work here thus needs to be recognized as an extraordinary feat of scholarship.'
Elliott Logan
Projections Volume 11, Issue 1

  • Collapse
  • Expand

All of MUP's digital content including Open Access books and journals is now available on manchesterhive.

 

    • Full book download (PDF with hyperlinks)
All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 51461 43892 419
Full Text Views 1554 517 8
PDF Downloads 1508 285 2
Cover Dance and politics

Dance and politics

Moving beyond boundaries

Author:
Dana Mills

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Nov 2016
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
Redeem Token

Dance has always been a method of self- expression for human beings. This book examines the political power of dance and especially its transgressive potential. Focusing on readings of dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, Gumboots dancers in the gold mines of South Africa, the One Billion Rising movement using dance to protest against gendered violence, dabkeh in Palestine and dance as protest against human rights abuse in Israel, the Sun Dance within the Native American Crow tribe, the book focuses on the political power of dance and moments in which dance transgresses politics articulated in words. Thus the book seeks ways in which reading political dance as interruption unsettles conceptions of politics and dance.

Cover It’s a London thing

It’s a London thing

How rare groove, acid house and jungle remapped the city

Author:
Caspar Melville

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Nov 2019
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
Redeem Token

This book discusses the emergence in London of three specific dance music multicultures in the context of the racialised city. Focusing on rare groove, acid house and jungle it places the emergence of these multi-racial music cultures in the context of theories of space and the historical forces which racialised the city in the late 20th century. Based on a wide range of original interviews with cultural producers – DJs, promoters, producers and dancers - undertaken over 20 years, read alongside cultural theory and contemporary accounts, it argues that music and the practices of space around music have been a crucial way in which racial segregation has been challenged and multiculture has emerged in London.

Cover Tony Garnett

Tony Garnett

Author:
Stephen Lacey

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
Available In:
Redeem Token

This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.