Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and BeyondOne of the most distinctive voices in film criticism explores relationships between narrative style and sexual politics. Robin Wood, well known for his books Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan and Hitchcock's Films Revisited, probes the political and sexual ramifications of fascism and cinema, marriage and the couple, romantic love, and representations of women, race, and gender in contemporary films from the United States, Europe, and Japan. He looks closely at the works of Leo McCarey and Jacques Rivette, Ozu's "Noriko Trilogy," and the recent Generation X films Before Sunrise and The Doom Generation. In a chapter on fascism and cinema that juxtaposes Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Alain Resnais's Night and Fog, Wood finds that what is most important is not these films' record of another time and place but "the light they can throw on our contemporary cultural situation." Wood's central concern in these chapters is the ways in which the films relate to sexual politics and the organization within our culture of gender and sexuality. Seeing humanity as a "battleground" of a struggle between forces for Life and those of Death, Wood holds out hope for a joining of the forces of feminism, antiracism, lesbian and gay rights, and environmentalism necessary for authentic movement toward liberation. |
Contents
Introduction | |
FascismCinema | 1 |
MARRIAGE AND THE COUPLE | 17 |
The Couple and the Other | 19 |
Renoir and Mozart | 48 |
Resistance to Definition Ozus Noriko Trilogy | 82 |
THE FAMILY | 127 |
Leo McCarey and Family Values | 129 |
WOMEM OPPRESSION AMD TRANSGRESSION | 213 |
Three Films of Mizoguchi Questions of Style and Identification | 215 |
Persona Revisited | 236 |
RACE AMD GENDER | 251 |
Mandingo The Vindication of an Abused Masterpiece | 253 |
TOWARD LIBERATIOM | 271 |
Narrative Pleasure Two Films by Jacques Rivette | 273 |
Drawing Earl The Lessons of Life Classes | 289 |
Family Loyalties | 162 |
ROMANTIC LOVE | 175 |
The Two Gaslights | 177 |
Letter from an Unknown Woman The Double Narrative | 186 |
Rethinking Romantic Love Before Sunrise | 306 |
Finale The Doom Generation | 324 |
Index of Names and Titles | 333 |
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Common terms and phrases
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