Gestures of love : romancing performance in classical Hollywood cinema / Steven Rybin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rybin, Steven, 1979- author.

Series:

SUNY series, horizons of cinema.

SUNY Series, Horizons of Cinema

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Love in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Production and direction--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures--California--Los Angeles--History--20th century.

Motion picture acting.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 pages) : illustrations, photographs.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : SUNY Press, 2017.

Summary:

Gestures of Love considers the viewer's enchantment with charismatic actors in film as the starting point for closely analyzing the performance of love in movies. Written with a thoughtful adoration for the actors who move us, Steven Rybin examines several of cinema's most beloved on-screen movie couples, including Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and William Powell, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore, Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, and Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone. Using the classical genres of screwball comedy, film noir, and the family melodrama as touchstones, Rybin places the depiction of romance in films into dialogue with the viewer's own emotional bond to the actors on the screen. In doing so, he offers rich new analyses of such classic films as Bringing Up Baby, The Thin Man, Twentieth Century, Laura, To Have and Have Not, Tea and Sympathy, Written on the Wind, and more.

Contents:

Introduction: The actor's heartbeat

Part one: Screwball love

Love's final irony: John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth century

Wicked jaws, lanky brunettes: Myrna Loy and William Powell in The thin man and Libeled lady

"You look so silly": Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, Bringing up baby, and The Philadelphia story

Part two: noir amour

Love's possession: Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney in Laura

Wooing bogie, courting Bacall: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To have and have not, The big sleep, Dark passage, and Key Largo

Part three: Love and melodrama

Lipstick on a teacup: performance in Vincente Minnelli's The cobweb and Tea and sympathy

Hudson, Bacall, Stack, Malone: love and gesture in Douglas Sirk's Written on the wind

Coda: Modern love.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438465531

143846553X