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The research for this thesis is on representations of masculinity in Anglo-American submarine films since 1943. The discussion will draw on relevant work on the representation of masculinity and popular cinema in film and cultural studies. In particular, the thesis will account for the notion of hegemony in relation to masculinity in the submarine film. Further, the notion of hegemonic masculinity will be addressed in terms of four key claims. These are as follows: that relations between groups are characterised solely by domination and subordination, that a singular hegemonic masculinity prevails at anyone time, that this masculinity is coherent, and that hegemonic masculinity is consistently dominant in relations of power. Through the reading of the films, this thesis will critique the notion of hegemonic masculinity in the following terms: a) the recurrent concern with the group emphasises teamwork and cooperation rather than domination and subordination. Even where these relations operate at the level of fantasy, they can suggest utopian possibilities of mutuality. b) This preoccupation with teamwork shows that the struggle between competing masculinities endorses difference in masculinity, not just a hegemonic masculinity. c) Rather than privileging hegemonic masculinity as coherent, this struggle leads to alliances between masculinities, in which hegemonic masculinity has to negotiate contradictions in masculinity. d) This account of submarine films therefore shows that masculinity involves the complex negotiation of differences and not solely the consistent privileging of hegemonic masculinity. The analysis will be organised into chapters that derive specifically from the following thematic concerns within the case study: nature, the masculine body, men's friendships, rationality, vision and power, ideological processes, and the submarine as masculine space. Through the discussion of these themes and the developments in submarine films, the thesis will show the extent to which representations of masculinity in the case study conform to assumptions about hegemonic masculinity and popular film.

This project aims to interrelate psychoanalytic theory, the constitution of subjectivity and 1940s Hollywood cinema. By arguing that 1940s Hollywood cinema is a symbolic apparatus that displays a series of scenarios of desire (fantasies) in which sexual difference is constructed through the characters, this thesis emphasizes the important role cinema can fulfil in re-constituting a Symbolic textual order that mediates the individuals' relation with the external world. It is argued in this study that by displaying a series of symbolic fantasies 1940s Hollywood cinema contributes to the construction of both a meaningful social reality and the individuals' subjectivity during a decade characterized by a general crisis in Western civilisation, as indicated by World War Two. In order to put forward the argument that the fantasies displayed by classical cinema fulfil a crucial role in subjecting spectators to desire, the Unconscious, and sexual difference, this thesis extends psychoanalytic film theory in the areas of both textual analysis and the metapsychology of classical cinema. It is argued that the value of psychoanalysis for cultural analysis lies on the insight that the function of textual analysis is to offer an explanation of why and how cultural texts make sense to subjects/spectators and, thereby, fulfil a role in the constitution of their subjectivities. Regarding the metapsychology of cinema, the thesis offers a critical view of both the Imaginary and the Fantasy paradigms that have shaped psychoanalytic film theory. In order to develop a metapsychology of 1940s Hollywood cinema that is based on the psychoanalytic concept of the Symbolic realm, so that sexual difference can be taken into account, this thesis both draws a distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic dimensions of fantasy and aims to offer an explanation of how the spectator's sexual identity affects and is affected during spectatorship.

This thesis considers the construction and circulation of the image-text 'Audrey Hepburn', and its reception by young British women across two moments: the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1990s. The project uses a tripartite methodology: close analysis of film texts, press and publicity relating to Hepburn; archival research using sources including women's and film fan magazines, and interviews with women who admire and have admired Audrey Hepburn. The thesis argues that Hepburn can be understood as a star who offers an address to a feminine audience, and goes on to explore the taking up of that address through analysis of the data gathered in the interviews, paying particular attention to questions of class, generation and socio-historical moment. The research presents a number of different kinds of material: it considers Hepburn as a star and the reasons for her enduring popularity; it suggests the flexibility of her image as key in understanding this longevity and in enabling her to appeal to women across lines of class and generation. The thesis argues that it is this flexibility, and the ways in which Hepburn's image manages social contradictions, which have been key to the way consent has been secured from women around her as a star. It investigates the nature of the relationship between Hepburn and the women who admire her, and also, through their detailed talk, offers insight into the social history of femininity. In attending to both text and audience, the thesis attempts to think the relationship between them outside psychoanalytically informed theories of identification which have been hegemonic in film theory, offering instead the terms resonance and recognition as ways of understanding that relationship. An interdisciplinary project, the thesis represents a 'cultural studies of film' which extends existing work on stars such as Dyer (1979,1982,1986, 1991) and Stacey (1994).

During the 1990s the notion of the heritage film has become a taken for granted category of British cinema. Rather than dispute the merits of particular films that lie within this genre I question the construction of the relation between the idea of heritage and contemporary British film and television. Using the critical literature established by the contending cultural histories that address the rise of heritage in British culture, I highlight other, frequently personal and national engagements with inherited pasts. The concentration upon inheritance lends a greater emphasis to what is passed on from the past and endures in the present. The modes of articulating these inherited pasts are formally distinctive and constructed out of the vocabulary of documentary and fiction. The corpus of texts begins with the apparently radical avant garde film-making of Derek Jannan and moves through the work of the Black Audio Film Collective to the apparently conservative television documentaries of Alan Bennett. These key voices are then situated in relation to the hegemonic definition of heritage and current debates concerning British film and television. The persisting opposition which defined British cinema during the 1980s posits an unofficial cinema characterized by dissent and urban decay against an official cinema represented by the heritage film. My corpus of texts challenges this opposition. The different engagements with inherited pasts take place from different speaking positions and represent a diminishing publicly funded tradition of film and television production. The range of positions from margins to centre reveal that there was a contestation of the cultural sources which are aggregated into the construction of heritage during the 1980s and 1990s.

This thesis examines the role of music and cultural conceptions of emotion and `the feminine' in gendered characterisation in 1940s melodrama and the woman's film. Music in melodrama and the woman's film predominantly follows the late-19th century Romantic style of composition. Many theorists have discussed this type of music in film as a signifier of emotion and `the feminine', a capacity in which it is frequently associated with female characters. The full effect of an association with this kind of music on either female or male characterisation, however, has not been examined. This study considers the effects of this association through three stages - cultural-historical precedents, the generic parameters of melodrama and the woman's film and the narrativisation of music in film. The specific study of films involves textual and musical analysis informed by cultural-historical ideas, film music theory and film theory. Since female characters are more commonly associated with music in this context, they form the primary focus of the study. Male musical-emotional characterisation, while of constant concern, comes under particular scrutiny as the final stage of the study. In conclusion I argue that cultural assumptions combine with the formal representations of film to construct a model of gender based on the idea of `inherent' emotionality. As a definitive element of this dynamic, music functions as more than just a signifier of emotion. Rather, it takes a crucial role in determining how we actually understand emotion as part of gendered characterisation.

This dissertation examines the relationship between the French Communist Party (PCF) and French cinema between 1944 and 1999. The approach adopted is an historical and political one, exploring the context behind the changing relations between the Party and the film industry. Both institutions have played a crucial part in the weaving of the political and cultural fabric of the country throughout the period. For both the PCF and French cinema, the Liberation marked a new beginning and a new relationship with the French state. Looking closely at the French Communist outlets over four key periods - the Liberation and the Cold War, the New Republic, May '68 and the 1990s -, the evolution of the positions of the PCF regarding both film as an industry and film as an art-form is examined with particular emphasis on the links and the differences between the film policy advocated by the PCF and its critical discourse on French cinema. Since 1944 and PCF has kept a close watch on France's film industry, participating, from the Blum-Byrne agreements to the demonstrations against the MAI, in every battle for its defence. The unique blend of State involvement in film matters and professional resilience in the face of foreign competition which defines French cinema today owes much to this Communist involvement. Yet in spite of this continuous support the PCF has not left a strong mark on French cinema either in aesthetic or ideological terms, and the silver screen has hardly ever broadcast the PCF viewpoint. The reluctance shown by some in the Party to acknowledge the concept of auteur as well as the Party's own history serve to explain this absence. Until the 1980s, the PCF's discourse was dominated by the defence of France's national culture, although some Communist critics and auteurs disputed this vision tainted with economism.

The present study deals with the use of classical music in narrative film, and some of the theoretical and historical considerations that can help us contextualize and understand that use. The following is a list of chapters, and a summary of concepts contained therein. CHAPTER ONE: After briefly considering some of the challenges of interdisciplinary scholarship, I will review the literature on classical music in the sound film. This review will touch upon the early (1930s and 1940s) commentaries of Kurt London, Hanns Eisler and Theodor Adorno, and John Huntley, and then pass on to a kind of concensus held between both commentators and composers of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally I will review the work of more recent film music scholars who, along with some others working in other fields, provide what I feel to be a more open model for understanding this kind of film music. CHAPTER TWO: Having reviewed the position of the film music community, this chapter will concern some responses of music critics to film music generally, and the appropriation of classical music in particular. I will outline specific complaints and criticisms, and attempt to show some of the broader socio-musical issues that motivated them. CHAPTER THREE: This chapter will consider the musical parallelism associated with traditional Hollywood-type narratives, and then concentrate on the oppositional model (derived from "montage" aesthetics) represented by Soviet and other modernist cinemas. I will deal especially with the influential "counterpoint analogy, " and consider how musical discourse can resolve some of the confusions that this analogy has habitually presented. CHAPTER FOUR: The last chapter will have presented a counterpoint based on musical principles as a possible analogy or metaphor for how film music works, and how its meaning and affect can be understood. This chapter is about the programme music tradition that prevailed in the nineteenth century. I will enumerate some of its sin-fflarities, musically and in terms of its critical reception by the music community, to film music. I will explore how programmes, or extra-musical narratives, are also central to understanding musical meaning, and to the use of classical music in films. CHAPTER FIVE: Here I will look more closely at montage, meaning, and classical music on film. A number of questions will be addressed. What are the interpretive strategies that most apply? How does musical meaning function in a film context, especially with regard to source music? Beyond classical music in general, what is the importance of periods, idioms, composers and specific pieces? What is the significance of the artist's intent? What about when the artist is not fully in control of his circumstances, or of his craft? What of phenomenology? All of these expansions obviously complicate the equation. Accordingly the concept of indeterminacy will be reviewed to suggest how both chance and control operate within musical montage. CHAPTER SIX: I will suggest and expand upon some of the extra-musical implications of this study. I will suggest some of the possibilities these raise for future research.

In writing this thesis I have tried to get beneath the clichés of disability imagery to reveal the social constructions, through cinematic processes, of images of physical impairment as disability. The thesis must be seen in the context of other writers who have done similar work on other marginalised groups within our society that are regularly portrayed on the cinema screen: gays, blacks, women and, to a lesser extent, the working-class. The construction of school of writers, using representation theory, who have over the last two decades revealed that which had previously been taken for granted - the ideological and cultural influences on and of imagery that have an impact upon the lived lives of those represented - have been my guiding influence. The Social Model of disability theory has been used as my primary methodological framework and analytical approach. In the introduction I provide an outline of Disability Theory — i.e., the Medical Model and the Social Model of disability - and define the theoretical framework within which the thesis has been written to make the thesis comprehensible in the wider context of the social construction of 'disability'. In the literature review of disability imagery writing (Chapter One), I include writing that is journalistic rather than academic to redress the general scarcity of writing on disabling images. In this thesis, the cinematic techniques that construct impairment as disability, i.e., pathologise impairment as Other(ness), are identified. I explore three specific areas of cinema and culture in Chapters Two, Three and Four of the thesis: the use, or non-use, of stereotypes; the representation of the family in relation to disability, and finally, the use of the abnormal body to pathologise impairment.

This thesis discusses the use of pop songs in narrative films, with particular attention paid to their role in characterisation. My argument concerns the potential for pop to retain its specificity as a certain type of music whilst it carries out functions normally attributed to a composed score. Many commentators have assumed that, because a song may be known before it is used in a film, its narrative meanings are "pre-packaged". I combine an appreciation of pop music's propensity to come to a film already 'known' with an attempt to demonstrate how individual narratives ask songs to perform different affective roles. It is my contention that pop music's quality of 'knownness' is fundamental to its narrative affect in films, without, however, pre-determining that affect. I argue my case through close textual analysis, discussing the relationship between real-life pop stars' musical personas and the film characters they are asked to play, as well as offering numerous examples of songs without an on-screen performer becoming involved in processes of filmic narration.

Paris is one of the key sites of meaning regarding France's cinematic output. This thesis surveys the contribution German émigré filmmakers made to the French cinema of the 1930s through a series of case studies of their depiction of the nation's capital city. It argues that this contribution was both typical and singular. The émigrés engaged directly with traditions of Parisian representation, but they also played a distinctive role in the important debate over the direction early French sound filmmaking should take. The body of the thesis contains detailed textual analysis of many émigré productions which have hitherto been ignored within film history. It contextualises this analysis with comparative discussion of films made by indigenous professionals and an examination of past and present intertextual aspects of Parisian culture. The thesis moves beyond aesthetic concerns to also consider the political, industrial and social significance of the work of the émigré Filmmakers. The reception of their films is located within a history of the Franco-German relationship as a whole. By drawing widely upon supporting documentation in critical and trade journals of the time, the thesis provides a new history of a crucial transitional point in the development of European film culture.

This thesis analyses the 'rape-revenge' films of the post- 1970 period. Against the tendency of existing work in this area to categorize rape-revenge as a sub-genre of horror, I argue that rape-revenge is better understood as a narrative structure which, on meeting the discourses of second-wave feminism in the 1970s, has produced an historically specific, but generically diverse cycle of films. I suggest, therefore, that the rape-revenge cycle might usefully be read as one of the key ways in which Hollywood has attempted to make sense of feminism and the changing shape of heterosexual femininity in the post-1970 period. Using a model of cultural analysis influenced by Gramsci's theory of hegemony, I argue that it is in the struggle between the feminist stories the rape-revenge structure attempts to tell and the feminine stories embedded in the genres over which it has been mapped that common-sense understandings of feminism are produced. Initial consideration is given to the ideological effects of various generic deployments of the rape-revenge structure in the pre-1970 period. Subsequent chapters explore the ways in which post-1970 deployments of the structure negotiate and rework the 'mass cultural fictions of femininity' inscribed in the genres over which they have been mapped, and the understandings of feminism these negotiations have produced. The ways in which extra-textual material such as reviews contribute to the construction of these understandings is also explored. Additional consideration is given to the increasing influence of post-modern aesthetics on Hollywood film, the emergence of the New Right during the 1980s and the characterization of this period as one of post-feminism or backlash. In identifying the rape-revenge cycle as one of the key sites through which the meanings of feminism are constructed and negotiated, I suggest that the most politically expedient form feminist film theory can take today is not one which attempts to separate feminist film from mainstream film, the political from the popular, but one which attempts to theorize the relationship between feminism and film, the political and the popular.

This thesis attempts to provide a critical framework for discussion of English language films featuring non-white homosexual characters and contribute to the on-going debate concerning the cinematic representation of racial and sexual minorities. It does not attempt to offer an exhaustive account of the field. Emphasis is placed on why there have previously been few films containing non-white homosexual characters and why there are now more such films, as well as identifying the way in which these characters are depicted. The study begins by examining the intimate relationship between Western construction of racial and sexual discourses. Through analysing several contemporary films and reviewing critical literature from the fields of post-colonial and “race” criticism, lesbian, gay and gender studies, I argue that (white) homosexuals and non-white people have often been depicted as analogous, although not identical, in sexual “perversity”. I further suggest that they are depicted as similarly deviant because of the reproductive threat that they pose to the white heterosexual norm. The homosexual actions of nonwhites, (who have historically been stereotyped as “naturally” sexually deviant), are usually interpreted as an example of their loose morality, rather than as an indication of non-heterosexual identity. By contrast, white subjects who engage in homosexual practises are usually accorded a lesbian or gay identity. I argue that the recent increase in the number of films containing non-white homosexual characters reflects the influence of “politically correct” discourses and theories of “hybridity”. I further suggest that the crossover success of a number of these films indicate that traditional stereotypes of race and sexuality are now called into question.

This thesis examines the ways in which heterosexuality is rendered in the Hollywood genre where its existence is most privileged: musicals of the studio era (c. 1930 - c. 1960). In this popular film category, heterosexuality is expressed in a framework of "boy-meets-girl" amatory coupling that is remarkably amplified and insistent. In analysis that is at once sympathetic and critical of the subject matter, I show that heterosexuality in the Hollywood musical is constructed in a way that is far from monolithic. On the contrary, I find that there are in fact varieties of heterosexual identity that exist in the genre, and that they are most succinctly revealed through romantic engagement. Yet heterosexuality is depicted along divergent formulations owing to contrasting relational aims and assumptions. Building on Richard Dyer's 1993 essay, "'I Seem to Find the Happiness I Seek': Heterosexuality and Dance in the Musical," I will discuss how the basis of these separate models is traceable to different approaches related to power distributions between men and women. These processes, in turn, arise from different notions concerning masculinity and femininity. In this way, a mix of gender expressions inhabit the Hollywood musical leading to an assortment of heterosexual models. Textually these models become visible not only through an analysis of characterization and the position of the man and woman within the narrative, but in the camera work, all aspects of the mise-en-scene, and most cogently, in the arrangement of the central heterosexual couple in the song-and-dance sequences. For my examination of heterosexuality in the Hollywood musical, I will concentrate on the work of two of its greatest auteurs: Fred Astaire (star) and Vincente Minnelli (director). The impact each man made on this genre is hard to overestimate. In terms of methodology I divide my analysis between these two artists, and ascertain what model(s) of heterosexual identity are communicated by them. Then after establishing what design(s) of heterosexual life each one suggests (for Astaire I analyse Top Hat [1935] as well as Carefree [1938] and The Sky's the Limit [1943], while for Minnelli I look at Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Pirate [1948]), I conclude this thesis by examining their most acclaimed joint effort (The Band Wagon [1953]) to discern what, if any, change one might have had on the other. A phenomenon tied to the US musical (whether stage or screen) is that although it is the most heterosexual of genres, it is also one traditionally both crafted and appreciated by gay men. Though it does not fall within the scope of this thesis, it is worth speculating for future work if Astaire's heterosexuality and Minnelli's homosexuality had any significant bearing on the way they represented the standard boy meets-girl plot device upon which the Hollywood musical relies.

The thesis deals with two central issues: a) the construction of a framework for the study of film acting which places performance in a cultural context b) the cultural significance of Method acting during the 1950s with specific reference to American cinema of the period The first chapter considers the ways in which the voice and body in film acting are made meaningful in the context of beliefs about acting and personal identity. The chapter also proposes ways for situating the practical activity of film acting in a context of cultural production. The remaining chapters study the cultural significance of Method acting through separate analyses of the Method technique, style, representation of gender, and image of star performance. Readings of the Method technique and style are placed in the context of a `culture of personality', in which the significance of the Method was produced in the ways that acting signified beliefs about personal identity. The discussion of the Method style is then developed in the analysis of the ways in which the style was used in film melodramas to represent the gendered anxieties of the rebel hero. Finally, Marlon Brando's image and performances are studied for how the actor personified the meaning of the Method. Together, technique, style, gender representation, and stardom, are studied as various aspects of what is called the Method discourse.

This thesis examines horror films through an application of cultural analysis (primarily the work of Pierre Bourdieu) to selected texts in order to answer critics employing psychoanalytic perspectives to horror. It argues that psychoanalysis misses much of the heart of horror texts through its claims that textual 'meaning' lies within individuals rather than in the society in which horror texts were produced. Bourdieu's hypotheses are applied to films, along with the work of more specific horror analysts such as Mark Jancovich, amending and fusing these approaches in order to question psychoanalytic criticism. The thesis argues that a limited academic canon of texts is employed in the (still relatively rare) analysis of horror, and that such a narrowing of the field is inappropriate and limiting. It argues that the study of extreme and banned material in analysis is constructive academically,accessing underground horror production through an extended focus on horror fan culture, following Robin Wood's assertion that horror aficionados form horror's main body of consumers. Through an examination of how fan culture perceives and defends itself, material previously neglected by academia, though potentially of great interest to cultural analysis (such as the underground and banned films) is analysed alongside canonical texts. The thesis focuses mainly on post-1968 films, and so examines the influence of post-Fordist economics and ideals on the texts that it studies, arguing that at every level these structures construct the subtle fears of horror's audiences, delimited through what texts present as frightening. This is developed alongside a consideration of important historical events and cultural ideals surrounding the production of texts. It is argued that such events exert subtle influences during textual creation, and that they help to exacerbate the audience fears that horror films exploit. It is also argued that, with amendment, auteur theory may be applied to some horror directors, despite the majority of internal textual meanings being generated by a film's cultural frame rather than purely its director. Though, through the horror underground and accepted academic canons many types of horror film are considered, especial attention is given to the Slasher and Possession genres, which, it is argued, oppose directly each other's subtextual, ideological agendas. Analysis of other genres and the texts (both canonical and underground/banned)t hat compose them is present throughout the thesis. Underlying all analysis is a consideration of how the mass (British and U. S) media seeks to demonise horror and its consumers, and how legislation against texts and individuals brings together fans in an alternative culture through the fanzines that they read. It is hoped that through such an approach and emphasis on the non-canonical as well as the canonical, future academic analysis of horror will be more comprehensive in its choice of studied texts. This could occur, I suggest, through an acknowledgement that, following Wood, central to the analysis of horror is an understanding of its aficionados and the culture that they forge for themselves.

The claim providing the starting point for this thesis is that most narrative films are in an overtly dramatic, melodramatic or comic idiom. These modes seem most adept at tapping the visually expressive potentialities of the art and satisfying the needs of the audience: the narratives of most films are structured around either confrontation, or colourful events, or crisis, or periods of significant change, and they are expressed in a demonstrative visual style. This thesis is interested in the way a few films uncover profundity by structuring narrative around a range of life experiences unavailable to the melodramatic mode as it has developed in world cinema; life experiences based in the everyday, that is in the routine or repetitive, in the apparently banal or mundane, the uneventful. The first part of the thesis discusses the nature of the achievement of these undramatic films which address the everyday: how they help us to understand the medium of film, its possibilities, and how they enhance our ways of viewing and appreciating narratives. This section also focuses on the work of Stanley Cavell, exploring the links between the everyday, film melodrama, and scepticism. The second half of the thesis looks at the specific achievements of four films. Here, the thesis continues the expressive tradition of film scholarship which analyses the communication of meaning through the construction of mise-en-scene, exploring how the themes, ideas, and happenings of a film are served by their stylistic strategies, while further highlighting how such strategies may reveal significant possibilities of the medium. In doing so it follows the approach of writers such as Stanley Cavell, V. F. Perkins and George M. Wilson whilst redirecting this tradition by applying it to less obviously expressive films.

This thesis centres upon variously detailed analyses of the early fictional films of director Martin Scorsese, ranging from the student short film What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) to the big-budget production New York, New York (1977). Through this, the thesis seeks to enact an intervention in the debate surrounding film authorship. Informed by a broadly poststructuralist position, the thesis recasts authorship as a discourse that exists in a particular, mutually inflecting relation with a text's other constituting elements. While the analysis of specific films traces the stylistic and thematic consistencies that inform Scorsese's authorial discourse, the latter's specific articulations are read in relation to the texts' institutional, industrial, and historical determination. That the texts studied were made within a variety of filmmaking practices - student production, exploitation cinema, independent filmmaking, major studio finance and distribution - enables consideration of authorship within different contexts of production. Crossing this, the thesis charts the genesis, institutional appropriation, and consequent rejection of New Hollywood Cinema, a phase of filmmaking of which Scorsese's early work is paradigmatic. The thesis is organized on a chapter per film or production situation basis. The introduction outlines its theoretical underpinning. The conclusion briefly contextualizes the films which Scorsese has directed since New York, New York. The thesis concludes that authorial analysis remains a valid critical practice, but also one which needs to be located in relation to other determining factors.

This dissertation examines the representations and metaphoric functions of food and eating in a wide range of European and American films. It purports to present an original approach to film historiography and to the study of film aesthetics. The first chapter, "Food and National Identity in the Cinema," addresses the specific case of food as a conveyor of national identity in French film. Analysis in this chapter is founded on recent critical debates on nationhood and national cinemas. The first part of the chapter examines French films of the pre-war period, whenu food and eating were especially used to convey consensus and harmony. The second part deals with the post-war period, when food started to clearly signify the deterioration of communal, familial and national structures and traditions. The second chapter, "Film, Food and the Feminine," traces mainstream and avant-garde representations of women as both cooks and eaters from the pre-feminist (i.e. up to about 1969-1970) to the post-feminist periods. Analysis is based on feminist cultural criticism of the contradictory messages sent to women about food and eating. Depictions in the pre-feminist period contained eating and cooking women within very limited and stereotypical cinematic spaces. The post-feminist period has seen a diversification of the possible ways of presenting women together with food, especially in films made by female directors. Chapter Three, "Alimentary Delinquency in the Cinema," deals with the distinctly post-classical phenomenon of films that feature acts of cannibalism, coprophagy and other aberrant eating practices. Eased on theories of the "carnivalesque" in film, the first part of the chapter offers an analysis of the specific areas of film production in which alimentary delinquency is prominent: the low forms of the horror film, counter cinema, and contemporary art films. The final section examines alimentary delinquency as a form of corporal spectacle which has the capacity to provoke physical reactions in the spectator's own body. The Conclusion considers recent international "food films" to see how they crystallise and amplify many of the issues raised in this study.

This thesis is an investigation into the working practices of Odin Teatret. It focuses on the making of the latest group performance, Kaosmos, made between 1992-1993. The thesis extracts certain transmissible principles of practice from the process of Kaosmos. These principles are concerned with the director's work on performance. The work of the actor is therefore only referred in order to illuminate or explain this. The thesis covers all areas of creative work involved in making performance: the director's instructions, the actors' actions, the texts, music, songs, sound, set, lighting, costumes and props. This is the first study of the work of Eugenio Barba that follows his process of making a performance from inception to finish, and, from this, extracts principles of practice. This is not just a theoretical or historical document, but one that can hopefully contribute to the working practices of other directors. The method of investigation was primarily practical. I was assigned the role of assistant director on Kaosmos. This gave me a daily insight into the working practice of Odin Teatret in rehearsal. The thesis documents this process through practical analysis and extracts from my work diary. It concludes with a performance-text of Kaosmos, the basis of which I created during the process as a working document for Barba and the actors. The thesis is divided into two main parts: the first part gives the theoretical background to the working practices to be documented later in the thesis. The second part shows how these theories of practice were actually implemented in rehearsal. The aspects here perceived as being central to the making of performance are: 1) the ability to begin work on a performance at a stage before meanings, characters and narratives have been established and 2) the use of montage as the main structural dynamic in the creation of performance. The intention of the thesis is not to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions. This would endanger the creative nature of the practice it documents and turn the information here offered into a handbook of rules. The intention is rather to allow the information to inspire and inform other practitioners, without creating any definition of how this should occur. It is of upmost importance that each artist interpret and use what is here written in their own individual manner. All the quotes are given in their language of publication, all translations contained in the text are by myself.

This thesis attempts to broaden the critical boundaries within which the films of Chantal Akerman have been discussed. First, it extends analysis from Akerman's 70s to her 80s and 90s films. Second, it argues that as well as her gender and aesthetic identities, Akerman's Belgian and Jewish identities should be acknowledged. Finally, it suggests that each of these four identities: woman, independent film-maker, Belgian and Jewish allow her a position of marginality, figured in her films through the trope of 'displacement'. The structure of the thesis is two-fold: it extends discussion of Akerman's cinema to films not previously considered, and through this extension engages with contemporary issues in film and cultural theory such as female authorship, independent and national, and marginal cinemas. Chapter one `Woman' and chapter two `Independent' extend the reading of gender and sexuality and formal and aesthetic innovation in Akerman's cinema. In the first chapter this is done through consideration of the films Golden Eighties (1986) and Nuit et jour (1990), while in the second her short films, video work and work for television are examined. My third and fourth chapters offer areas of Akerman's work which have not previously been studied. Chapter three, `Belgian', considers the significance of Akerman's nationality for her film-making while engaging with theories around national cinema. It examines the possibility of a `Belgian national cinema' and the intersections which arise between this and Akerman's cinema, especially around Toute une nuit (1982). Finally, in my fourth chapter, `Jewish', I use Histoires d'Amerigue (1989) and D'Est (1993) to argue that Akerman's is a `wandering' cinema, in which she is constantly examining the homelessness and displacement that her Jewishness engenders.

The dissertation presents an account of the contemporary American action cinema. The themes, stereotypes and iconography associated with the genre are explored through detailed discussion of film examples. Films are also situated in relation to the particular context of production and consumption associated with 'new Hollywood', including genre hybrids, the blockbuster as a form and the importance of new forms of distribution such as home video. Though framed as a genre study, the account is also centrally concerned with an exploration of gender. The dissertation presents an account of the articulation of masculinity within the genre and engages with developing debates in this field. It is suggested that contemporary images of men, widely discussed as new, can be usefully explored in relation to the generic history from which they emerge. The articulation of masculinity in the genre is explored through both genre codes and star images. Recent distinctive roles for women in the action cinema are further situated in a generic context. The research also explores the contention that representations of gender should be understood within an exploration of other discourses including race, class and sexuality. The place of black performers in the genre is discussed, and the extent to which recent films reiterate and/or develop existing stereotypes is addressed in this context. The limitations of ideological and narrative analysis in relation to a political exploration of the popular cinema is explored, with a consideration of cinematic spectacle and the place of fantasy identifications and symbolic configurations of power. The political ambivalence of popular imagery is emphasised in this context. It is argued that action films, which are often dismissed as simplistic in political terms articulate complex configurations of gendered and other identities.

This study attempts to provide a theoretical framework for the criticism of colonial and post-colonial African cinema. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which the nature of colonial cinematic policies and practices have influenced post-colonial African cinema, especially with regards to forms of subjectivities constructed through cinematic representation. The study begins by examining some of the methodological problems in the criticism of African cinema. It relates the concept of African cinema to debates dealing with Third Cinema theories, cine-structuralism and psychoanalytic critical theories, and argues that any of these theories can be applied to the criticism of African cinema so long as it is moderated to suit the specific nature of the African condition. It also defines the nature of African cinema by relating it to the notions of national cinema, the question of African personality and identity, emergent genres and film styles, and proposes a general cinematic reading hypothesis, anchored on the concept of subjectivity, for the criticism of African cinema. With respect to the colonial period, the main argument which I pursue is that two divergent cinematic practices existed side by side in Africa. First, there was a governmental and non-governmental agencies sponsored, non-commercial cinema, which treats the medium as a vehicle for popular instruction. Throughout this study, I refer to this cinematic practice as colonial African instructional cinema, and argue that it represents Africans as knowing and knowledgeable people, able and willing to acquire modem methods of social planning and development for the benefit of their communities. Second, there was the commercial cinematic practice which chose, and still chooses, to recycle popular images of people of African descent in the European imagination, as projected through literature, history, anthropological and scientific discourses, etc., in the representation of Africans. I refer to this cinematic practice throughout this study as colonialist African cinema. The main argument which I pursue with respect to this practice is that the images of Africans projected in it have a genealogical history stretching as far back in time as the classical era. In the modem period, the contact between Europe and Africa, and the subsequent slave trade, colonialism and their popular literatures, and the nineteenth century racial theories, are some of the factors which have reinforced the canonical authority of these images. I argue that this cinematic practice represents Africans by employing various metaphors which draw associations between Africans and animals, to suggest African savagery and barbarity, and that by drawing on such associations, they devalue African humanity, legitimise the colonial enterprise and all its attendant cruelties, and absolve Europeans of any moral responsiblities over actions supposedly carried out in the name of spreading civilisation. Though post-colonial African historical texts located in the colonial period respond to the whole colonial enterprise, my argument is that they are inspired, first and foremost, by the desire to refute the images of Africans identifiable with the discursive tradition of colonialist African CInema.

This is a study of Soviet montage cinema and the British documentary movement of the 1930s which brings together two usually divergent methodologies: postcolonial theory and "new" film history. The first chapter develops new insights into Eisenstein's October and Vertov's The Man With the Movie Camera, The second analyses two less well-known Vertov films, One Sixth of the Earth and Three Songs of Lenin, from the perspective of postcolonial theory, The third considers Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia and traces its reception in both the Soviet Union and England. The fourth and fifth chapters expand general issues and themes raised by the first two, and pursue specific questions raised by the third. These final chapters resituate the work of the British documentary movement in relation to the culture of British imperialism. This shift of focus entails the analysis of the production and contemporary critical reception of a number of films which have been marginalised in most retrospective historical accounts of the movement. By recontextualising these two groups of films, this study attempts to demonstrate how their various representations of the non-Western world are intertwined with and necessarily involve considering other issues, such as: periodisation within film history; the "influence" of Soviet montage on the British documentary movement; the construction of authorship; the division between "high" and "low" culture; the relationship between politics and film aesthetics; the postcolonial challenge to Marxism; cinematic internationalism. The first two chapters also integrate an ongoing critique of certain trends within post-1968 film theory and criticism, which developed in close association with a retrieval and revaluation of Soviet montage cinema and Soviet avant-garde culture of the 1920s, One of the aims of this thesis is to question some of the assumptions of this work, whilst at the same time demonstrating that historical research, even as it attempts to reconstruct former contexts, need not consign its objects of study to the past, but can be used instead to raise questions relevant to the present. In this respect, the thesis tries to remain closer to the spirit of post-1968 than does much of the more recent, "new" historical research into Soviet cinema and the British documentary movement, to which it is nevertheless greatly indebted.

This study is an investigation into the shifts in ways of knowing which have been subsumed under the label of postmodernism. More specifically, it is concerned to relate theories of Postmodernism to the construction of film as an object of knowledge and to feminism's place in a Modernist/postmodernist divide. Chapter One offers an examination of competing readings of the nature of aesthetic Modernism drawing primarily upon debates on Modernist epistemological legitimation advanced by Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Franicois Lyotard. Chapter Two utilizes Lyotard's notion of Modernism as knowledge legitimated by the grands recits of speculation and emancipation to propose a understanding of the conceptual parameters of avant-garde film Modernism. Chapter Three examines Lyotard's view that postmodernism is acondition of cultural 'incredulity towards metanarratives' by introducing feminist interventions into avant-garde Modernism: it is argued that feminist deconstructionist film plays a crucial role in delegitimating film practices brought under the metanarrative of speculation by challenging the non-gendered mode of spectatorial knowledge claimed for them. Chapter Four extends postmodernist critiques of 'totalizing' discourses to the grand recit of liberty, and advances the view that feminist deconstructiorism, and related psychoanalytical theories of female subjectivity/spectatorship, are in turn delegitimated for instrumentalizing and homogenizing the feminist 'social bond'. Chapter Five considers Lyotard's propositions for a fragmentation of Modernist models of the 'social bond' in relation to his proposal for a theory of resistance defined in terms of 'dissensual paralogy'. Within the context of cultural and technological shifts in contemporary image-culture, the usefulness of a theory of postmodernism which remains embedded within Modernist epistemological differentiations is questioned. A proposal for a theory of film postmodernism which dispenses with the avantgarde/mass culture binary is suggested as a prerequisite for clearing a theoretical space for a politics of resistance which is not founded on instrumentalized and homogeneous spectators. Chapter Six extends this to consider how postmodernist notions of the dissolution of the 'self' and the fragmentation of 'social bond' relate to feminist emancipatory claims. A parallel to the theoretical 'loss' of Modernist foundationalisms; is offered by drawing on black and lesbian perspectives on film spectatorship to argue for theories of film meaning which reflect a multiplicity of modes of spectatorial positioning. The study concludes with an assessment of feminism's place in critiques of totalizing discourses and argues for local contextual rather than metanarrative validations of film as critical discourse.

The thesis represents an attempt to bring together theoretical and empirical work on (grotesque/excremental) humour. The first two sections are consequently concerned with the history and theorisation of the grotesque/excremental and with the prevalent ways of analysing the comedic. It was decided that a 'history' of Monty Python would constitute too long a digression, and so only a brief account of Terry Gilliam's links with the grotesque is included. Two further section then deal with some of the research on the comedic which has been done and with audience research methodologies. It is worth noting a shift which took place in the course of work on this thesis, from a concern with highly individuated responses (reflecting the centrality of psychoanalytic explications of the comedic) to an eventual decision to concentrate on a 'readerresponse' approach. The rationale for this shift is discussed in Section 5, and briefly in Section 6. The empirical heart of the research is, then, an analysis of a transcript of six hours of taped interviews/discussions about responses to Monty Python's Meaning of Life. These are supplemented by the results of Humour Appreciation Tests and Mood Adjective Check Lists administered under standard conditions to the respondents watching the film. While there can be no question of 'proof', particularly in a field in which psychoanalytic mechanisms are arguably crucial, results of the empirical study indicate that the humour of Meaning of Life functions to reduce anxiety, and that the mechanism by which this occurs conforms to a Freudian repression model. Over and above this, however, - the work of David Morley and Janice Radway is worth evoking here - the detailed account of audience response also furnishes data for further enquiry about how and why 'real' respondents do or do not find grotesque and excremental humour 'funny'.

This thesis is an attempt to account for the contemporary American horror film's increased reliance upon images of bodily dismemberment and decay. At the core of this exploration is an inspection of the body's capability as a metaphor by which our understanding of the relation of self to society is articulated. The horror film is shown to be a genre traditionally disposed towards the interrogation of categories of human identity,and one which is now responding to the kind of cultural developments often referred to by the expression postmodernism. As such the genre is placed in a context of other social discourses about the body, death, disease and decay.In proposing the body as the central metaphor of the modern horror film, and pursuing its significance in a range of recent film texts, the thesis triesto provide a positive basis for understanding an aspect of popular culture often left 'explained' by accusations of exploitation or dismissed by the traditionalists as aberrant. The thesis does not attempt to be a theory of genre per se, nor does it offer an exhaustive account of the field; the outlining of the emergence of a new tendency is not meant to imply that more conventional material has been discontinued. 'Body Horror' is argued to be the most important development in the field however, and the work concludes after demonstrating its vitality in recent examples where its deployment takes radically varied positions with respect to the construction of the masculine subject in particular. The work is broken down into five Chapters. In Chapter One the existing theoretical literature is critically examined. In Chapter Two, the nature of the contemporary horror film is laid out. In Chapter Three the body as a symbo is considered in relation to the genre. In Chapter Four this idea is developed through textual analysis in relation to discourses of death and disease. In Chapet Five the emergence of a postmodern horror film is considered. A conclusion acts as a summary and as a focus in which the implication of the work for feminist and psychoanalytical theories of the subject can be drawn.