British Film Institute – serie

British films of the 1960s are undervalued. Their search for realism has often been dismissed as drabness and their more frivolous efforts can now appear just empty-headed. Robert Murphy's Sixties British Cinema is the first study to challenge this view. He shows that the realist tradition of the late 50s and early 60s was anything but dreary and depressing, and gave birth to a clutch of films remarkable for their confidence and vitality: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving, and A Taste of Honey are only the better known titles. Sixties British Cinema revalues key genres of the period - horror, crime and comedy - and takes a fresh look at the 'swinging London' films, finding disturbing undertones that reflect the cultural changes of the decade. Now that our cinematic past is constantly recycled on television, Murphy's informative, engaging and perceptive review of these films and their cultural and industrial context offers an invaluable guide to this neglected era of British cinema.

In The Eloquence of the Vulgar, the distinguished academic Colin MacCabe reflects on cultural change from Shakespeare to Derek Jarman, on the institutional forms of knowledge, on the links between popular and elite art, and on the role of the intellectual in contemporary life. A radical argument emerges from the book's diverse concerns. Cinema and television - the new and democratic art forms of the twentieth century - demand a fundamental rethinking of our concepts of language and culture. What is at stake is the very idea of a liberal and humane education.

This work maps the rich, varied cinema of Eastern Europe, Russia and the former USSR. Over 200 entries cover a variety of topics spanning a century of endeavour and turbulent history from Czech animation to Soviet montage, from the silent cinemas dating back to World War I through to the varied responses to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. It includes entries on actors and actresses, film festivals, studios, genres, directors, film movements, critics, producers and technicians, taking the coverage up to the late 1990s. In addition to the historical material of key figures like Eisenstein and Wadja, the editors provide separate accounts of the trajectory of the cinemas of Eastern Europe and of Russia in the wake of the collapse of communism.

This work examines major box office hits like 'The Full Monty' as well as critically acclaimed films like 'Under the Skin'. It explores the role of distribution and exhibition, the Americanisation of British film culture, Hollywood and Europe, changing representations of sexuality and ethnicity.

In the conference Africa and the History of Cinematic Ideas held in London in 1995, film-makers, cultural theorists and critics gathered to debate a range of issues. Views were exchanged on such topics as imperialism, and the problems of distribution.

This text presents the work of cultural theorists and philosophers of new media, together with the perspectives of artists experimenting with different interactive models critically examining their own practice. The book proposes the use of new critical tools for discussing new media forms.

An exploration of the stylistic, aesthetic and thematic impact of hospital drama. This book argues that 'new' medical dramas offer a different landscape from their predecessors, and they tend to disturb rather than reassure. The medical profession are often depicted as being forced to confront new management , ethical labyrinths, and noxious patients. The historical development of the 'new' medical drama is also explored, along with the implications of, and anxieties within, the depiction of modern healthcare. Lastly the book looks at the parallels between cultural fascination with the body as either sick or perfect and the attractions of a genre that seems to revel in the juxtaposition of morbidity and glamour.

What will prove to be the lasting impact of New Media on film and television? What kinds of transformations of moving image media are really already under way? The term 'new media' has become an effective catch word both as a description of the digital delivery of media via the Internet, DVD, and digital television and as a reference to the 'newness' such technologies have brought to media more generally. And yet the nature of this transformation has been over-hyped and too little understood. The New Media Book provides an accessible, critical intervention into the field of moving image studies and features 20 newly commissioned and thought-provoking essays in a format designed to be of wide use to a range of courses in digital media, film and television studies. The book is divided into five thematic sections: Technologies, Production, Texts, Consumption, and Contexts and addresses how 'new media' is both embracing and altering the existing media landscape. Topics discussed include the ways in which we interact with digital television, the changing methods of production, distribution, and exhibition within the media industry, and how the histories of traditional media have influenced the development of new media. The New Media Book examines the corresponding influences that 'traditional' media and 'new' media are having upon each other as well as revisiting central, continuing issues surrounding the moving image and the contexts in which all the media operate. The collected essays present and redefine these crucially important topics providing the most systematic analysis of both change and continuity in the contemporary media landscape yet published in the field of screen studies.

Why are some contemporary television shows so compelling? The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends and ER are examples among many of a new era of the 'must-see' programme. These shows and others like The X-Files and Ally McBeal, have a compulsiveness, a depth of characterisation and 'back-story' that puts most of cinema to shame. Quality Popular Television looks at this new category of 'cult' television (mostly US-produced) and the reasons for its emergence. Looking at shows as diverse as Ally McBeal, Martial Law, Buffy, Lois and Clark, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Ellen the book examines the particular qualities necessary for success and how they relate to issues such as the economics of network scheduling, the growth of the internet and contemporary debates about television audiences. This important new book provides an invaluable window on transformations in contemporary television culture.

Alongside the commercial cinema of narrative and spectacle there has always been another practice - call it avant-garde, experimental or artists' film (as opposed to art cinema). It is this work that Nicky Hamlyn, himself an acclaimed film-maker in the alternative tradition, investigates in Film Art Phenomena. The work takes its cue from modern trends in other artforms, notably painting and sculpture. This is film-making that emphasises the nature of its apparatus and medium in order to bring about a critical, inquisitive state of mind in the viewer. It deconstructs, anatomises and reimagines what film images are; it builds new machines; it recreates the setting of cinema or expands into new kinds of performance and exhibition. It often has a political dimension - urging audiences to make a free and active response not a passive, consumerist one. Hamlyn's major new study treats artists' film conceptually in order to explore key categories that connect different works and film-makers: from framing to digital media, installation to interactivity, point of view to sound. In so doing he considers the work of Stan Brakhage, Malcolm Le Grice and Michael Snow, as well as younger artists such as Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Jennifer Nightingale, and Colin Crockatt, among many others. Film Art Phenomena is a crucial intervention in debates about the modes of film-making that diverge from and oppose the mainstream.

Teen TV is the first anthology dedicated to a broad range of television programmes produced for and watched by teenagers. With extensive coverage of shows such as Dawson's Creek, Roswell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Australia's Heartbreak High, the book examines how these dramas construct and reaffirm distinct visions of 'youth'. Addressing a number of fundamental questions, the contributors ask: Is teen TV a genre in its own right? What other narrative forms do these programmes draw upon and why? How does teen TV interact with other entertainment industries, such as those of music and cinema? What position does teen TV hold within wider practices of consumption and identity inscription? The book offers a fascinating survey of the different forms teen TV takes and the many ways in which it is produced and consumed.

This groundbreaking book investigates the murky relationship between the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau and the British film industry, shedding new light on police-media relations. Beginning with the culture of suppression during the interwar period, when retired police inspectors were threatened with loss of pension should they become involved with the film industry, the relationship shifted when a forgotten pioneer of public relations, Percy Fearnley, was appointed to the role of Metropolitan Police Public Information Officer in 1945. Fearnley was the first-ever journalist to take up this role and, through him, the Metropolitan Police embarked on a series of collaborations with the highest echelons of postwar British cinema, including J. Arthur Rank, Ealing Studios and Gainsborough Studios. Using newly-declassified internal Metropolitan Police and Home Office correspondence, Alexander Charles Rock tells the story of the Metropolitan Police’s project to manipulate the British film industry into producing propaganda under the guise of mainstream entertainment cinema. In doing so he offers a radical re-reading of the context of production of a number of canonical British films such as The Blue Lamp (1950), I Believe In You (1952) and Street Corner (1953).

Despite the key contribution of sound to the development of cinema as a modern (and modernist) art form, analyses of the relationship between film and modernism often overlook the key role played by sound in film.Film Sound Modernism addresses this critical neglect by exploring how speech, music and sound effects have been used by filmmakers to articulate the conditions and experiences of modernity. Through a wide-ranging analysis of international films, including those from Taiwan, Mexico, Poland and Hong Kong, Andy Birtwistle approaches modernism as both a trans-historical and trans-national phenomenon. He provides close readings of key examples of experimental and art cinema, including The Forgotten Village (1941), L'avventura (1960), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), The Terrorizers (1986) and Perestroika (2009). He then goes on to tackle topics including the use of environmental sounds in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Tsai Ming-liang, and Edward Yang, the voices of non-actors and artist filmmakers, and the ways in which forms of creative noise challenge the traditional division of the soundtrack into dialogue, music and effects. In doing so, he investigates the forms of sonic and audio-visual experimentation that developed within the medium and re-examines cinema's place within the broader history of modernism.

In this unique study of the star, Sunera Thobani unpacks Shah Rukh Khan's unlikely and yet unparalleled rise to fame, set against the backdrop of India's evolving socio-political landscape.Thobani provides close readings of key films from across Khan's three-decade-long career, including Darr (1993), Swades (2004), Om Shanti Om (2007), My Name is Khan (2010) and his most recent work Dunki (2023), examining his depiction of a 'desirable masculinity' and how this differs from notable predecessors like Amitabh Bachchan and his 'angry young man' persona during the 1970s. Through the lens of Khan's Indian-Muslim identity, she analyses his often risky role choices, arguing that he is able to simultaneously embody hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses, while staunchly resisting the relegation of Muslims to the margins of Indian nationhood since the earliest stages of his stardom.She goes on to explore Khan’s popularity amongst diasporic communities in South East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, considering how his cultural politics, both on- and off- screen, embody the dichotomies of majority and minority, nation and diaspora, and tradition and modernity, arguing that it is this dynamism that bolsters his lasting cultural influence and transnational stardom.

In this new edition of The Television Genre Book, leading international scholars have come together to offer an accessible and comprehensive update to the debates, issues and concerns of the field. As television continues to evolve rapidly, this new edition reflects the ways in which TV has transformed in recent years, particularly with the emergence of online streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and Amazon Prime. It also includes a new chapter on sports TV, and expanded coverage of horror, political thrillers, Nordic noir, historical documentary and docu-drama. With analyses of popular shows like Stranger Things, Killing Eve, The Crown, Chernobyl, Black Mirror, Fleabag, Breaking Bad and RuPaul’s Drag Race, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of television genre for scholars and students alike.

Action Cinema Since 2000 addresses an increasingly lively and evolving field of scholarship, probing the definition and testing the potential of action cinema to reframe the mode for the 21st century.Contributors examine a broad range of content, from blockbusters to smaller independent films, originating from China, Korea, India, France, the USA, and Mexico. Ranging from JSA: Joint Security Area (Gondonggeonygbi guyeok) (2000) to Polite Society (2023), they consider the changing modes of action cinema, with streaming assuming global importance and an ever-increasing number of generic blends. They consider under-explored areas of action film, particularly how race, ethnicity, gender, and age figure in narratives and through image and soundtracks.Overall, the book demonstrates how 21st century action cinema engages with and reflects geopolitical, creative, and industrial developments. Contributors argue that it continues to offer fantasies of empowerment and mobility that say much about how power is understood in diverse contexts today.

Richard Dyer is a foundational figure for the critical study of cinema and popular culture. Across a career spanning five decades, he has made path breaking contributions to our understanding of stardom and celebrity, gay and queer politics and cultural history, film music, race and whiteness and the pleasures of popular entertainment. The Richard Dyer Reader brings together for the first time key writings by this vital and influential figure, many of which are not otherwise available. The anthology guides readers through Dyer’s prolific and rich output through six thematic selections of essays and extracts, each centred on a key theme in Dyer's work: stardom and the image; entertainment and ideology; gay politics and representation; whiteness; the pleasures of popular entertainment, and textual analysis. A seventh section comprises a selection of interviews conducted across the span of his career, as well as a new interview with editors Glyn Davis and Jaap Kooijman. The book will provide an introduction for those new to Dyer’s writings, as well as offering a fresh perspective for readers with a more comprehensive knowledge of his work. The collection includes archival and recent pieces of writing never previously anthologised, newly commissioned essays, a substantial introduction to Dyer’s life and work and framing introduction to each section.

In a comprehensively revised and updated new edition, James Naremore provides an illuminating critical account of the films of Stanley Kubrick, from his earliest feature, Fear and Desire (1953), to the posthumously-produced A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001). Naremore offers provocative analyses of each of Kubrick's films, considering his emphasis on the absurdity of combat, as in Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), the failure of scientific reasoning, as in 2001 (1968), and the fascistic impulses in masculine sexuality, as in Dr Strangelove (1964) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He argues that while Kubrick was a voracious intellectual and a life-long autodidact, the fascination of his work has less to do with the ideas it espouses than with the emotions it evokes.Combining close readings with new insights into the production histories and cultural contexts of key films, Naremore provides a concise yet thorough discussion that will be useful to students of Kubrick's filmmaking and cinephiles who seek a deeper insight into the work of this perfectionist genius.Revised throughout, this new edition also includes a fully updated bibliography of critical writings on Kubrick's cinema.

Challenging the study of both celebrity and the cinema, Mandy Merck argues that modern fame and film melodrama are part of the same worldview, one that cannot resolve the relation of personal worth to social esteem. Tracing the history of this conundrum back to the philosophy of the 17th century and the theatre of the 18th, she demonstrates its convergence in stage melodrama and its intensification in the Hollywood star system. Are today’s celebrities worth our attention? In that demand for judgement and the hope for its visual guidance, the melodramatic imagination survives – permeating not only fiction film, but documentary, the artist’s film, and our self-exhibition on social media.Examining a range of classical and contemporary films from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) to Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour (2014) , the many remakes of A Star Is Born, the compulsory exhibitionism of political celebrity and the unmasking of whistle-blowers, Merck illustrates the ways in which the cinema constantly restages the moral evaluation of prominent individuals, whether they are actors, artists, politicians or activists.

Japanese animation is at the nexus of an international multimedia industry worth over $23.6 billion a year, linked to everything from manga to computer games, Pokémon and plushies. In this comprehensive guide, Jonathan Clements chronicles the production and reception history of the entire medium, from a handful of hobbyists in the 1910s to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away and beyond.Exploring the cultural and technological developments of the past century, Clements addresses how anime’s history has been written by Japanese scholars, and covers previously neglected topics such as wartime instructional animation and work-for-hire for American clients. Founded on the testimonies of industry professionals, and drawing on a myriad of Japanese-language documents, memoirs and books, Anime: A History illuminates the anime business from the inside – investigating its innovators, its unsung heroes and its controversies.This new edition has been updated and revised throughout, with full colour illustrations and three new chapters on anime’s fortunes among Chinese audiences and subcontractors, 21st century trends in ‘otaku economics’, and the huge transformations brought about by the rise of global streaming technology.

Cinema Memories brings together and analyses the memories of almost a thousand people of going to the cinema in Britain during the 1960s. It offers a fresh perspective on the social, cultural and film history of what has come to be seen as an iconic decade, with the release of films such as A Taste of Honey, The Sound of Music, Darling, Blow-Up, Alfie, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde. Drawing on first-hand accounts, authors Melvyn Stokes, Matthew Jones and Emma Pett explore how cinema-goers constructed meanings from the films they watched - through a complex process of negotiation between the films concerned, their own social and cultural identities, and their awareness of changes in British society. Their analysis helps the reader see what light the cultural memory of 1960s cinema-going sheds on how the Sixties in Britain is remembered and interpreted. Positioning their study within debates about memory, 1960s cinema, and the seemingly transformative nature of this decade of British history, the authors reflect on the methodologies deployed, the use of memories as historical sources, and the various ways in which cinema and cinema-going came to mean something to their audiences.

Experimental Cinema examines a range of structures, systems and strategies that film and video artists have developed from the late 1960s to the present. Over the decades, artists have responded to the ever-changing medium of cinema and its technological advances, as well as taking inspiration from painting, sculpture and music.Simon Payne argues that the evolution of methodical strategies in experimental cinema goes back to the first avant-garde films made a century ago, in the 1920s. He shows how key figures internationally have formed part of this picture since then, but suggests that the most thorough formal exploration of cinema can be credited to a generation of artists that began making films in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.Payne analyses the work of numerous influential artists including Peter Gidal, David Hall, Malcolm Le Grice, Annabel Nicolson, Jayne Parker and Guy Sherwin. He discusses recent and lesser-known works as well as canonical films, videos and expanded cinema. He also pays close attention to younger artists including Jenny Baines, Neil Henderson, Jennifer Nightingale and Samantha Rebello.Experimental Cinema traces a lineage that has defined some of the central preoccupations of artists’ film and video, which continue to test our expectations of cinema, television and the moving image.

This open access book presents the first critical analysis of the work of Stephen Dwoskin, groundbreaking filmmaker, artist, graphic designer and writer.Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012) was a groundbreaking filmmaker, artist, graphic designer and writer, most renowned for his key role in establishing the London Film Makers Co-Op and The Other Cinema, his book Film Is…(1975), and his experimental, feature length and documentary films. Though his films continue to be screened around the world, his work has - until now - remained chronically under-researched.Emerging from a major AHRC-funded University of Reading/LUX/BFI research project which explored the unique archive from Dwoskin's estate, this book is the first to critique, analyse and give new insights into this influential but under-studied figure. Inside, a range of established scholars, artists who worked with Dwoskin, emerging critics, curators, cultural historians and archivists highlight Dwoskin’s continued relevance to the fields of art history and fine art, film studies, archives and collections, graphic design, and disability studies.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Royal College of Art.

Why did British television in the ‘long 1970s’ prove such a fertile ground for programming that explored the occult, the supernatural and the darkness that threads its way through British folk culture? Diane Rodgers’ innovative and broad-ranging study traces the pre-history, flourishing and after life of ‘wyrd TV’ on British screens from 1968 to 1984, delving into the fascinating intersection of folklore, folk horror and screen representation. She traces the roots of this phenomenon in classic folkloric texts that had an influence across popular culture, from the Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’ LP to the children’s TV show Bagpuss, and examines its profound impact on subsequent generations of TV and film-makers.Rodgers charts folk horror, hauntology and dystopian narratives in programming aimed at both adults and children, documentary and drama, news, chat shows and public information films, and sets out the concept of ‘mass-mediated ostentation’ as a framework for understanding ‘wyrd TV’. She unpacks the central contribution of screenwriter Nigel Kneale, discussing how Kneale’s Quatermass (1979) intertwines elements of folklore, stone circles, and alien themes, creating a hauntological, folkloric, and televisual 'wyrdness’. She goes on to consider the cult series Children of the Stones (1977) and how it combined themes drawn from Druidic folklore, supernatural and psychic activitiy and extra-terrestrial manifestations with formal elements of lighting and sound to chilling effect.Rodgers highlights the profoundly experimental nature of children's programming in the 1970s, the influence of social and political phenomena including feminist debates, industrial unrest, and punk rock sensibilities and its impact on shaping the perspectives of Generation X who grew up watching it. Her study takes in contemporary work by writers and directors including Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Ben Wheatley and Richard Littler who have been inspired by the ‘Wyrd TV’ of their youth.

Play for Today was the BBC's groundbreaking television anthology drama series, epitomising entertainment, social commitment and artistic and intellectual ambition. More than three hundred original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels were transmitted to the British public between 1970 and 1984, including legendary dramas such like Robin Redbreast (1970), Edna, The Inebriate Woman (1971), Penda’s Fen (1974), and the 'lost' In the Beautiful Caribbean (1972) – the only Play for Today with an all-Black cast, for which no video copy exists. Over 200 writers were involved, among them Stephen Frears, Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.This book is the first ever sustained and over-arching history of the iconic television strand, which provided a public-service of human-centric drama to large and varied audiences. Inside, Tom May rediscovers a prestigious phenomenon, analysing its aesthetics and style, its reception by viewers and critics and its trailblazing representations of change in British society, national and regional identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and class. He argues that its variety – with programmes spanning social realism and experimentalism – makes it a direct forerunner of Trainspotting (1996), This Is England (2006) and Small Axe (2020). Including detailed case-studies and many oral and written interviews with significant Play for Today actors, writers, composers, producers and directors, including Alison Steadman, Stephen Poliakoff and Alan Bennett, alongside crucial input from overlooked behind-the-camera figures like Jenny Brewer and Jacmel Dent, this book introduces Play for Today to a new generation.

Play for Today was the BBC's groundbreaking television anthology drama series, epitomising entertainment, social commitment and artistic and intellectual ambition. More than three hundred original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels were transmitted to the British public between 1970 and 1984, including legendary dramas such like Robin Redbreast (1970), Edna, The Inebriate Woman (1971), Penda’s Fen (1974), and the 'lost' In the Beautiful Caribbean (1972) – the only Play for Today with an all-Black cast, for which no video copy exists. Over 200 writers were involved, among them Stephen Frears, Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.This book is the first ever sustained and over-arching history of the iconic television strand, which provided a public-service of human-centric drama to large and varied audiences. Inside, Tom May rediscovers a prestigious phenomenon, analysing its aesthetics and style, its reception by viewers and critics and its trailblazing representations of change in British society, national and regional identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and class. He argues that its variety – with programmes spanning social realism and experimentalism – makes it a direct forerunner of Trainspotting (1996), This Is England (2006) and Small Axe (2020). Including detailed case-studies and many oral and written interviews with significant Play for Today actors, writers, composers, producers and directors, including Alison Steadman, Stephen Poliakoff and Alan Bennett, alongside crucial input from overlooked behind-the-camera figures like Jenny Brewer and Jacmel Dent, this book introduces Play for Today to a new generation.

On the evening of 26 January 1926, inventor John Logie Baird held a public demonstration in his workspace on London’s Frith Street of a ‘seeing by wireless’ apparatus that he and many others had been working towards, television. In the years that followed, variants of this astonishing device produced programming that was rich, complex and excitingly imaginative. Familiar television genres, including studio drama, quiz shows, variety spectaculars and sports broadcasts, were all fully realised in the 1930s. At the same time, early television was often strikingly different from later domestic broadcasting.Television began with intimate entanglements with interwar cinema, theatre, music and dance. And, despite reaching only tiny audiences, from its beginnings television responded to key strands of social history, embracing legacies of the Great War, changing roles for women, suburban living and more.Magic Rays of Light is a unique and comprehensive cultural history of early television, exploring its technologies and institutions, while also celebrating the programmes and the people, the ideas and the innovations of the first decade of what would become the most consequential medium of the subsequent century.

This book examines the integral role that makeup plays in the construction and promotion of female stardom, focusing on the transitional Hollywood period, between 1950 and 1970, a time of great change in Hollywood with the advent of television, the break-up of the studios and the break-down of the production code. Cathy Lomax's compelling study features in-depth case studies of stars Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Dorothy Dandridge and Joan Crawford alongside archival images of make-up promotional material and the make up used by stars and their fans to interrogate the role of makeup in defining and adjusting the appearance of race, beauty, ageing, naturalness, and sexual appeal in the star image. Makeup is a vital technical material in film and photography; correcting skin-tones for different film stocks and making features visible under bright lights. But it is also a component of a film’s mise-en-scene, intrinsically linked to the visual allure of cinema and helps to shape and refine the female star image, both on- and off-screen. Lomax's case studies show how makeup was used to create female figures such as the femme fatale played by Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953); how in various roles Natalie Wood's makeup was used to suggest a youthful, natural and openly sexual young woman, or, when as a white actress she was cast in 'ethnic' roles, to create an impression of a Hispanic, Native American or Black identity; how Dorothy Dandridge's light skin challenged codes around inter-racial relationships, with the result that her skin was darkened for love scenes with Black actors, and how the transition to colour impacted Joan Crawford's star persona as she aged, and how ideas about the grotesque nature of female ageing were represented in the 1960s cycle of 'hag horror' movies such as 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Drawing on film studies, feminist debates on masquerade theory, celebrity studies and fashion and cultural studies, alongside information from biographies, fan magazines, archives, and practical experience from her own work as a makeup artist, Lomax reveals the vital and under-examined role that makeup plays in the display of femininity on film, and how this is exemplified through the construction of individuated stardom. By making visible a material, that because of its connection with feminine adornment has been overlooked or disregarded, this book highlights undervalued labour, and foregrounds the female agency that was articulated by the design and application of makeup.

This book examines the integral role that makeup plays in the construction and promotion of female stardom, focusing on the transitional Hollywood period, between 1950 and 1970, a time of great change in Hollywood with the advent of television, the break-up of the studios and the break-down of the production code. Cathy Lomax's compelling study features in-depth case studies of stars Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Dorothy Dandridge and Joan Crawford alongside archival images of make-up promotional material and the make up used by stars and their fans to interrogate the role of makeup in defining and adjusting the appearance of race, beauty, ageing, naturalness, and sexual appeal in the star image. Makeup is a vital technical material in film and photography; correcting skin-tones for different film stocks and making features visible under bright lights. But it is also a component of a film’s mise-en-scene, intrinsically linked to the visual allure of cinema and helps to shape and refine the female star image, both on- and off-screen. Lomax's case studies show how makeup was used to create female figures such as the femme fatale played by Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953); how in various roles Natalie Wood's makeup was used to suggest a youthful, natural and openly sexual young woman, or, when as a white actress she was cast in 'ethnic' roles, to create an impression of a Hispanic, Native American or Black identity; how Dorothy Dandridge's light skin challenged codes around inter-racial relationships, with the result that her skin was darkened for love scenes with Black actors, and how the transition to colour impacted Joan Crawford's star persona as she aged, and how ideas about the grotesque nature of female ageing were represented in the 1960s cycle of 'hag horror' movies such as 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Drawing on film studies, feminist debates on masquerade theory, celebrity studies and fashion and cultural studies, alongside information from biographies, fan magazines, archives, and practical experience from her own work as a makeup artist, Lomax reveals the vital and under-examined role that makeup plays in the display of femininity on film, and how this is exemplified through the construction of individuated stardom. By making visible a material, that because of its connection with feminine adornment has been overlooked or disregarded, this book highlights undervalued labour, and foregrounds the female agency that was articulated by the design and application of makeup.