Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1929), starring Hollywood icon Louise Brooks, is an established classic of the silent era. Pamela Hutchinson revisits and challenges many assumptions made about the film, its lead character and its star.
G.W. Pabst's 1929 silent classic Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora), stars Hollywood icon Louise Brooks as the enigmatic heroine whose erotic charms lead to disaster for the men drawn into her web. Despite failing commercially upon release, it has evolved into a cult film long after it should have been forgotten. Pandora's Box captivates audiences with its libidinous, violent story, and its mysterious heroine whose motivations, as well as whose guilt or innocence, are difficult to determine. It is a sophisticated adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays, and indisputably Louise Brooks' finest performance on film.In her compelling study, Pamela Hutchinson traces Pandora's production history and the many contexts of its creation and afterlife, revisiting and challenging many assumptions made about the film, its lead character and its star. Analysing the film act by act, she explores the conflicted relationship between Brooks and the director G.W. Pabst, the film's historical contexts in Weimar Berlin, and its changing fortunes since its release.
30-Second Cinema offers an immersion course, served up in neat, entertaining shorts. These 50 topics deal with cinema's beginnings, with its growth as an industry, with key stars and producers.
No living person has seen the earliest films of pioneering cinema magician, Georges Mé́liès. All that remain are his catalogs and a few archival images. The 2013 discovery of a flip book manufactured by an obscure Parisian bimbelotier, Léon Beaulieu, promised a glimpse of an unseen Méliè̀s film. This idea inspired years of investigation by researcher Thierry Lecointe -- a trail that led him to collector and historian Pascal Fouché and his amazing collection of more than 10,000 flip books, including 27 produced by the mysterious Beaulieu. The conclusions of Lecointe's ground-breaking research are astonishing. Léon Beaulieu's primitive flip books were comprised of images appropriated from early films, many of them lost treasures. Early films by Méliès, but also Gaumont, Skladanowsky and Pathé suddenly came to life after more than a century! This meticulously researched volume reveals how these miraculous discoveries were made and features more than 500 previously unpublished images that you won't have seen anywhere else.-- (Indiana University Press)
Endlessly fascinating, dark and bright, The Red Shoes (1948) employs every branch of the cinematic arts to sweep the audience off its feet, invigorated by the transcendence of art itself, only to leave them with troubling questions. Representing the climax of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's celebrated run of six exceptional feature films, the film remains a beloved, if unsettling and often divisive, classic. Pamela Hutchinson's study of the film examines its breathtaking use of Technicolor, music, choreography, editing and art direction at the zenith of Powell and Pressburger's capacity for 'composed cinema'. Through a close reading of key scenes, particularly the film's famous extended ballet sequence, she considers the unconventional use of ballet as uncanny spectacle and the feminist implications of the central story of female sacrifice. Hutchinson goes on to consider the film's lasting and wide-reaching influence, tracing its impact on the film musical genre and horror cinema, with filmmakers such as Joanna Hogg, Sally Potter, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma having cited the film as an inspiration.
Die 50 bedeutendsten Ideen, Genres und Menschen in der Geschichte des Kinos
Kino in 30 Sekunden ist eine Reise durch die 50 Hauptbereiche des Films, beginnend mit den stummen Anfangszeiten über funkelnde Musicals bis zur Sowjetischen Montage. Jedes Thema wird in 300 Wörtern zusammengefasst, die in 30 Sekunden gelesen werden können, dazu kommt eine Illustration und schon tauchen wir in die Genres, Techniken, Regisseure und Stars ein, die die Geschichte des Kinos geformt haben. Ob luftige Romcoms oder ungeschminkte Dokumentationen - hier fi nden Sie Informationen zu allem.