The apartment complex : urban living and global screen cultures / Pamela Robertson Wojcik, editor.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wojcik, Pamela Robertson, 1964- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City and town life in motion pictures.

Apartments in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

200 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2018.

Summary:

From the bachelor pad that Jack Lemmon's C.C. Baxter loans out to his superiors in Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" (1960) to the crumbling tenement in a dystopian Taipei in Tsai Ming-liang's "The Hole" (1998), the apartment in films and television series is often more than just a setting: it can motivate or shape the narrative in key ways. Such works belong to a critical genre identified by the author as the apartment plot, which comprises specific thematic, visual, and narrative conventions that explore modern urbanism's various forms and possibilities. In this book a diverse group of international scholars discuss the apartment plot in a global context, examining films made both within and beyond the Hollywood studios. The contributors consider the apartment plot's intersections with film noir, horror, comedy, and the musical, addressing how different national or historical contexts modify the apartment plot and how the genre's framework allows us to rethink the work of auteurs and identify productive connections and tensions between otherwise disparate texts.

Contents:

Introduction: what makes the apartment complex? / Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Palaces of pleasure and deceit among the clouds: the depression-era cinematic penthouse plot / Merrill Schleier

From Walter Neff to C.C. Baxter: Billy Wilder's apartment plots / Steven Cohan

Alain Resnais, Tsai Ming-Liang, and the apartment plot musical / Joe McElhaney

Movement and stasis in Fassbinder's apartment plot / Michael DeAngelis

Housework, sex work: feminist ambivalence at 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles / Annamarie Jagose

Home's invasion: repulsion and the horror of apartments / Veronica Fitzpatrick

Reattachment theory: gay marriage and the apartment plot / Lee Wallace

"We don't need to dream no more. we got real estate": the Wire, urban development, and the racial boundaries of the American dream / Paula J. Massood.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-194) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Apartment complex.

ISBN:

9781478001089

1478001089

9781478001423

1478001429

OCLC:

1007567747