ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader

Michelle E. Moore is Professor of English at the College of Dupage, where she teaches courses in film studies and literature. She is the author of Chicago and the Making of American Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald in Conflict (2019) and coeditor of Refocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (2020). She has published articles in Faulkner Studies, Cather Studies, and Literature/Film Quarterly, in addition to contributing chapters to Modernism in Wonderland: Legacies of Lewis Carroll, Rape in Art Cinema, and Hemingway in the Digital Age. Brian Brems is a Professor of English at the College of DuPage, where he teaches film studies. He is the author of The Films of Walter Hill: Another Time, Another Place (2022) and the co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (2020), with other publications appearing in several edited collections on Westerns and horror films. He is also a regular contributor to a variety of online publications, including Vague Visages.

This engaging assembly of essays thoughtfully considers the output of one of cinema’s most misunderstood and neglected filmmakers and stands as the defining critical publication on Schrader as creator and critic.

• AcknowledgementsContributorsIntroduction: Taxi Driver Forward - Brian Brems and Michelle E. MooreSchrader and Style - Erik M. BachmanMovement and Meaning: The "unmotivated" Camera in Four Films by Paul Schrader - Deborah AllisonLate Schrader: From the Canon to the Canyons - BillyStevenson"Thinking White:" Performing Racial Tension in Blue Collar - Scott BalcerzakProphets and Zealots: Paul Schrader's Adaptations of The Mosquito Coast and The Last Temptation of Christ - Erica Moulton"So I find another form of expression": Art and Life/Art in Life in Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Thomas PraschSchrader’s Women: Cat People and Patty Hearst - Brian BremsPaul Schrader’s Experiment in Italian Neo-decadence: The Comfort of Strangers and the Sadean System - Robert Dassanowsky"Just Being Transparent Baby": Surveillance Culture, Digitization and Self-Regulation in Paul Schrader’s The Canyons - James Slaymaker"Every Act of Preservation Is an Act of Creation": Paul Schrader’s Eco-Theology in First Reformed - Tatiana ProrokovaLeaning on the Everlasting Arms: Love and Silence in First Reformed - Robert RiberaInterview with Paul Schrader conducted by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems on 9/27/2018 at the Rail Line Diner, NYFilmographyBibliography