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Neo-Romantic Landscapes: An Aesthetic Approach to the Films of Powell and Pressburger
Author: Stella Hockenhull
Date Of Publication: Sep 2008
Isbn13: 9781847187444
Isbn: 1-84718-744-7
Neo-Romantic Landscapes offers a reappraisal of the 1940s films of Powell and Pressburger focusing on their use of landscape. Questioning the established notion that the two film-makers, owing to their non-British personal roots, are located as un-British and ‘other’, Stella Hockenhull draws a correlation between the two media of film and painting to suggest otherwise. Emphasising the spiritual aspects of landscape and nature at a time when the experience and imagery of the war years generated a particular kind of ‘affect’ arising from the aftermath of destruction, she locates Powell and Pressburger’s wartime films in their historical and cultural context, notably Neo-Romanticism. By offering a close analysis of films such as A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I’m Going!, Black Narcissus and Gone to Earth she finds similar aesthetic qualities in a number of British landscape paintings executed contemporaneously.

Drawing on press reviews for contemporary spectator response, Neo-Romantic Landscapes offers a redirection of Film Studies, foregrounding the aesthetic pleasures of cinema in excess of narrative plausibility, thus resituating Powell and Pressburger in the British cultural traditions of the visual arts.

Stella Hockenhull is a senior lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton.

“This important reappraisal of the films of Powell and Pressburger locates their work within a wider context of British culture during the 1940s through the depiction of landscape. When read alongside Neo-Romantic paintings of the period, Hockenhull reveals not only their shared aesthetic approaches but also the 'structures of feeling' that these artists and filmmakers made available for audiences at this time. Through a combination of extensive historical research and detailed analysis, the author situates Powell and Pressburger more firmly within

British cinema of the Forties. At the same time, her combination of an aesthetic approach and Reception Studies provides a useful methodology for film studies, one that is sensitive to aesthetics, affect and emotion. Consequently, the films of Powell and Pressburger have never seemed more accomplished, engaging and affecting nor more central to current debates on British cinema.”

Dr Martin Shingler, Senior Lecturer in Radio & Film Studies, School of Arts, Design, Media & Culture

The Media Centre, Sir Tom Cowie Campus at St.Peter's, University of Sunderland

“This book argues that the 1940s films by Powell and Pressburger such as Canterbury Tales, Black Narcissus, I Know Where I’m Going!, and Gone to Earth are very much a product of the specific British cultural and historical situation of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. The author takes issue with current and established views that locate Powell and Pressburger within a European tradition of art and film aesthetics, and instead Hockenhull provides some excellent empirical research concerning the manner in which their films can be seen significantly to share similar aesthetics and concerns with British Neo-Romantic painters. As a trained art historian and film scholar she provides revealing comparative close visual analyses (of films and paintings), and she also examines the films’ critical reception when first released to support her argument about a general cultural British Neo-Romantic sensibility during this period. This thought provoking book is of particular interest to British cultural and art historians.”

Dr. Ulrike Sieglohr, Senior Lecturer in Film Television and Radio, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent

Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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