Review: Fritz Lang: Genre and Representation in His American Films by Reynold Humphries

AbstractHistorian John Dower titles his book War Without Mercy. Similarly, wartime Hollywood showed no mercy when depicting Japanese. Negative portrayals were often based on actual atrocities, but it was racism to demonize an entire people and culture. The story of how politics in Hollywood and Washington, the conduct of war, and international relations shaped and changed film racism involves a much more complex approach than has been practiced to date. Using archives of film studios, the Production Code Administration (PCA), and governmental agencies such as the Office of War Information (OWI), this article traces the power struggle among them and a new racism which emerged after 1941. Filmmakers now projected favorable images of Chinese to distinguish their new allies from the Japanese enemy. OWI struggled to promote a liberal agenda which saw the enemy as world fascism, not the Japanese people. The article analyzes more than two dozen films to trace the complications in three types of wartime screen racism: (1) "Verbal racism," such as derogating words like "Jap." (2) "Physical racism," which dramatized and ridiculed physical characteristics of Japanese people. (3) "Psychological racism," which saw all Japanese people as cruel and treacherous.

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New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645732.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Dolores Tierney

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

Global Markets ◽

Transnational Cinema ◽

Commercial Success ◽

The Road ◽

American Films ◽

On The Road ◽

New Perspective

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Latin American films Amores perros, Diarios de motocicleta, El hijo de la novia, Y tu mamá también, and Cidade de Deus enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success in global markets. Benefiting from external financial and/or creative input, these films were considered examples of transnational cinema. This book examines the six transnational directors (Iñárritu, Cuarón, del Toro, Meirelles, Salles and Campanella), who made these and the subsequent commercially successful and mostly ‘deterritorialized’ films (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, El espinazo del Diablo, El laberinto del fauno, Blindness, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men, On the Road, El secreto de sus ojos). Arguing against criticism in which these films’ commercial (Hollywood) and transnational features efface the authorial sensibilities of these directors and make them irrelevant to Latin American trends and politics, this book shows how they engage with national, continental and hemispheric politics and identity. Bringing a new perspective to the transnational films of Latin America’s transnational auteurs, including the recent Gravity, The Revenant, Birdman, and Crimson Peak, this book facilitates understanding how different genres function across cultures.

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Electronic Screens in Film Diegesis: Modality Modes and Qualifying Aspects of a Formation Enhanced by the Post-digital Era

Beyond Media Borders, Volume 1 ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-49679-1_4 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 141-173

Author(s):

Andrea Virginás

Keyword(s):

Fine Tuning ◽

Technological Changes ◽

Precise Description ◽

Systematic Description ◽

Digital Era ◽

American Films ◽

Narrative Method

Abstract The proliferation of television screens, video monitors and computer or mobile screens in film diegetic worlds is an apparently simple numeric increase of certain objects within the filmed space, conditioned by, and thus mirroring, contemporary technological changes. However, one should consider this intermediary screenic formation as a complex and versatile audiovisual and narrative method that could have emerged in this frequency only in our current post-digital era. This chapter argues that fine-tuning the model of media functioning presented in Elleström’s “The Modalities of Media” for this specific phenomenon enables a more precise description of the process along which the three presemiotic media modalities morph into the semiotic one. By presenting a systematic description of electronic screens in film diegetic worlds, and a general assessment of the intermedial processes at work, the chapter examines Euro-American films influenced by the video, respectively, the digital era and technology.

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Dibujando Metrópolis. El sueño arquitectónico de Fritz Lang

EGA Revista de expresión gráfica arquitectónica ◽

10.4995/ega.2017.5229 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (29) ◽

pp. 190

Author(s):

Pedro Molina-Siles

Keyword(s):

Fritz Lang

<p>La productora de la película <em>Metrópolis</em>, dirigida por Fritz Lang en 1927, recurrió a tres grandes escenógrafos para que, a través de sus dibujos, dieran forma a esa arquitectura protagonista indiscutible del film. Una arquitectura con grandes influencias arquitectónicas y urbanísticas que no dejó indiferente a nadie. En este artículo nos centramos en el análisis de los primeros dibujos que presentaron estos escenógrafos, su traslación a los decorados, la demostración de que estos son algo mas que un fondo escénico y el impacto que generaron, no solo en la arquitectura venidera sino también en la imagen de la ciudad del futuro que el cine nos depararía mas adelante.</p>

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