Melodrama, Masculinity and International Art Cinema

Exploring the rich field of modern auteur cinema, Alistair Fox offers an incisive and unique study of 'masculine interiority' within movie melodrama, shedding new light on some of the most canonical films of the last eighty years - Timothy Corrigan, Professor Emeritus of English, Cinema Studies, and History of Art, Fisher-Bennett Hall University of Pennsylvania. The breadth and depth of Alistair Fox's work is nothing short of astonishing. Recruiting scholarship that is equally extensive, he ranges across multiple nations, eras and cinematic movements. With forceful and elegant writing, Fox provides a rich understanding of how filmmakers represent the male of the species - KrinGabbard, author of Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus Original, comprehensive, and insightful, this book complements superbly the rich corpus of feminist publications on women in cinema. Alistair Fox casts a brilliant light on a series of post WWII melodramas that reject the male stereotypes engineered by Hollywood and suggest a gender fluidity leading to an authentic expression of the gay experience. An important book on a long-neglected material - Anne Gillain, Professor Emerita, Wellesley College. Alistair Fox's sensitive use of Charles Mauron's psychocritical approach illuminates the films of a range of directors whose films explore a fluid male sexuality. Paying close attention to form and music, as well as the directors' personal histories, he makes a convincing case for male melodrama as a key genre - Phil Powrie, Professor of Cinema Studies, University of Surrey, UK. Alistair Fox argues persuasively for a new understanding of the generic dimensions of melodrama in the context of the international art film through richly detailed analyses of the work of nine important directors. Theoretically sophisticated and extensively researched from primary sources, it provides us with a history of the post-war male melodrama as a distinct but largely unrecognized cinematic form - David A. Cook, Professor of Media Studies, University of North Carolina-Greensboro. This book is a tour de force, a new classic of gendered screen analysis. Fox's canvas is broad and international, but these superbly subtle readings-from Ray to Bergman, Truffaut to Guadagnino-take us intimately close to some of world cinema's most iconic male filmmakers and their alter egos. Under Fox's illuminating critical eye, filmic masculinity is revealed in all its nuanced, complex, melodramatic fascinations -Tim Palmer, Professor of Film Studies, UNC Wilmington, author of Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema and Irreversible.