Preminger's doubt : close analysis and film aesthetics in the aftermath of old Hollywood
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- I find something quietly unsettling in three unloved works by the aging (read "declining") Hollywood filmmaker Otto Preminger. In Harm's Way (1965), Skidoo (1968), and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970). These three films may at once appear somewhat unremarkable. They do not announce their strangeness with the kind of disjunctive experimentation like so many late 60s-early 70s films of the America's "New" Hollywood. But in them, Old Hollywood persisted, perhaps beyond the reach of its moment. In this project, I bring an art historical attentiveness and responsiveness to the study of film, and I find the doubts of the late 60s-early 70s quietly lurking in this rather unexpected place. "Preminger's Doubt: Close Analysis and Film Aesthetics in the Aftermath of Old Hollywood" is a project about the strangeness and inexhaustibility of the single work of art within and against its historical and aesthetic context. I show how three films forcefully probe a felt uncertainty in the aftermath of the Hollywood studio system, when the look and feel of American films—and American culture at large—were rapidly changing. Each work, in its own way, is attuned to a sense of vast institutional collapse, sensitive not only to Hollywood's fading memory of itself but also to the uncertain aftermaths of their contemporary moment—how Junie Moon's failure to follow relates to a waning of interest in NASA after the Apollo moon landing, how In Harm's Way's delayed credits sequence figures an uncertain world after the explosion of the atomic bomb, how Skidoo's widescreen aesthetics suggests a strange continuity between the older medium of film and the younger medium of television in the late 60s. But more than this, my dissertation finds an affinity between these films and the demands of close analysis. These films challenge us to connect—or meaningfully detach—certain moments, gestures, and images across the unfolding texture of the single work. At other times, they suggest parallels only to leave them open to doubt rather than neatly resolved.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Rownd, Henry |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Keathley, Christian |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Oeler, Karla |
| Degree committee member | Keathley, Christian |
| Degree committee member | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Degree committee member | Oeler, Karla |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Henry Rownd. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Henry Rownd
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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