Douglas sirk, aesthetic modernism and the culture of modernity.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Evans, Victoria L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sirk, Douglas, 1897-1987--Criticism and interpretation.

Sirk, Douglas.

Sirk, Douglas, 1897-1987.

All that heaven allows (Motion picture).

Schlussakkord (Motion picture).

Criticism and interpretation.

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] : Edinburgh Univ Pr, 2017.

Summary:

The first truly interdisciplinary analysis to link Douglas Sirk's striking visual aesthetic to key movements in twentieth-century art and architecture, this book reveals how the exaggerated artifice of Sirk's formal style emerged from his detailed understanding of the artistic debates that raged in 1920s Europe and the post-war United States. With detailed case studies of Final Chord and All That Heaven Allows, Victoria Evans demonstrates how Sirk attempted to dissolve the boundaries of cinema by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into the colour, composition and setting of many of his most well-known films. Treating Sirk's oeuvre as a continuum between his German and American periods, Evans argues that his mise-en-scène was the result of an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue, and illuminates the broader cultural context in which his films appeared by establishing links between archival documents, Modernist manifestos and the philosophical writings of his peers. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Sirk and the Visual Arts

1 Thinking with the Heart: Sirk and Pictorial Reception 13

2 Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Magnificent Obsession and the Influence of Modernist Painting 34

Part 2 The Shock of the New: Traces of Modernity

3 The Invasion of Machines and Machine Culture 65

4 Imitation of Life and the Depiction of Suburban Space 88

Part 3 Two Architectural Case Studies

5 Final Chord and 'Die Neue Welt': The Mise-en-scène of Aujbruch 115

6 Back to the Future: Modernist Architecture and All That Heaven Allows 147.

ISBN:

1474409393

9781474409391

OCLC:

949327413