Talking Back: Voice in Screwball Comedy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Wilkins
Keyword(s):  
Detective Story ◽  
Film Performance ◽  
Great Demand ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
Screwball Comedy ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Film Genres ◽  
Silent Era ◽  
Slapstick Comedy

Film had always been accompanied by sound in one form or another, but the ‘talkies’ introduced the prospect of a wider variety of film genres within mainstream narrative cinema that had not been possible during the silent era: genres that were reliant on language and verbalisation rather than mime and gesture. This development marked a change in film performance and acting style. As noted by Robert B. Ray: ‘Sound and the new indigenous acting style encouraged the flourishing of genres that silence and grandiloquent acting had previously hindered: the musical, the gangster film, the detective story, screwball comedy and humour that depended on language rather than slapstick.’ Although silent slapstick comedy remained in Hollywood, championed by the Marx Brothers, among others, the ‘talkies’ created great demand for a new generation of actors, those who could speak; it also generated a near-panic when these proved to be not that easily obtainable. Writers and directors of screwball comedy seized this opportunity, recognising that the comedy genre needed to incorporate the possibilities offered by synchronised sound.

Vestiges of Motherhood: The Maternal Function in Recent Black Cinema

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rizvana Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Historical Imagination ◽  
Black Aesthetic ◽  
Black Cinema ◽  
Black Mother ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Maternal Function ◽  
Familial Bonds ◽  
Current Task ◽  
Film Genres

While the lack of black femme presence is theorized explicitly with respect to film genres and the canon of American cinema in the work of Kara Keeling, the ontological position of the black femme (whom Keeling understands to be both visually impossible and interdicted yet full of cinematic possibility) has long been a point of interrogation in Black Studies with an extensive critical genealogy. In Saidiya Hartman's book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, the loss of the black mother animates the historical imagination of transatlantic slavery, just as her loss is irreducibly felt in relation to its afterlife. In the work of Frank B. Wilderson III, there is an explicit rejection of the potential of the black woman within film, specifically the viability of her maternal function, insofar as the black mother remains categorically essential to the construction of black (masculine) subjectivity. In light of the contradictory arc of this genealogy, the current task is not only to theorize the black maternal as an extension of the black femme, but to bring that position into view as the unthought. The black mother tends to be dramatized as the singular figure through which the cinema cultivates a distinctly black visual historiography. Even when placed under narrative erasure or withheld from view, the mother crystallizes a cinematic black aesthetic that fashions and envisions diasporic culture and forms of black collectivity as tied to a speculative and fraught filial genealogy. The critical arc in black narrative cinema over the last ten years from Get Out to Pariah, to Mother of George, and finally to Moonlight insists upon black motherhood as integral to the aesthetics of form and the genre-making capacities of film. One could go so far as to claim that the elements of cinematic form that drive these narratives reflect aesthetic choices that have to do with coloration, shot position, and narrative flashbacks that are themselves bound up with and inflected through the haunting and cipher-like construction of black maternal figures. Furthermore, these films insist upon simultaneously marking and excluding the mother from the emotional drama of black subjective life and its complex and contradictory expressions of intimacy, which have as much to do with the breaking and splintering of familial bonds as bridging gaps. It is clear that the mother sutures these bonds; she is a scar, a visible reminder and remainder of a terrible historicity that cannot be assimilated into the idealization of the American family.

Debates about the generic ontology of film noir

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Varmazi ◽  
Funda Kaya
Keyword(s):  
Film Noir ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Critical Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Film Genres

This viewpoint discusses the various definitions given to classic film noir in order to show how the concept of film noir is difficult to demarcate as a genre, remaining a debatable subject among theoreticians. On a broader level, it might be argued that these discussions are linked with the intertextuality, the dynamism and the hybridity of film genres. One can also argue that film noir stands as one of the preliminary examples of such hybridity in the history of Western narrative cinema. Such a debate is also connected to film noir’s deviance from Hollywood conventions. While inhabiting elements from these conventions, classic noir has been affected by European film movements whilst influencing them. Noir holds a critical position to the social conditions of its era, defined usually from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. It also produces generic stereotypical characters such as the ‘hardboiled’ detective and the femme fatale that are both embraced and highly criticized by film theoreticians. However, film noir is an ambivalent concept, a category of films that can be sensed, yet resists delimitation within strict boundaries.

Shkurupii, Geo (1903–1937)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj
Keyword(s):  
Detective Story ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Generation

Ukrainian futurist poet and prose writer Shkurupii was a close collaborator of Mykhail Semenko, the founder of Ukrainian Futurism. He penned articles about Marinetti and the Art of Noises in 1922. He debuted as a Futurist poet (‘King of the Futurist Prairies’) that same year with a perplexing collection, Psykhetozy [Psychetosis], distinguished by eroticism, narcissism, neologisms, Dadaist elements, and typographic experiments. The poems were ironic, anti-aesthetic, focused on urban themes, speed, and machines. Opposed to the symbolist cult of the poet, Shkurupii’s later poems were topical, narrative and rhetorical in form; he blasted conservatism and philistinism, while showing enthusiasm for the new Soviet revolutionary order. In 1923 he also embraced prose. Determined to develop a mass readership, Shkurupii focused on plot, defamiliarisation, mystification and canonical popular genres like the detective story. His acute formalism sometimes turned to self-conscious, meta-artistic practices, characterised by commentary on literary conventions that he set out to undermine in his writings. His most controversial novel was Dveri v den’ [Gateway into Day] (1929), a mélange of literary and documentary forms for which Soviet literary critics condemned him. In 1930 he edited two issues of the futurist publication Avanhard-Al’manakh proletars’kykh myttsiv Novoi generatsii [Avant-Garde: Almanac of the Proletarian Artists of the New Generation]. Shkurupii was executed during the Stalinist terror in 1937.

scholarly journals Sound Synthesis, Representation and Narrative Cinema in the Transition to Sound (1926-1935)

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81
Author(s):  
Maurizio Corbella ◽  
Anna Katharina Windisch
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Sound Synthesis ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Sound Film ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Transition To Sound ◽  
Film Genres

Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.

scholarly journals Crime Teenpic as a Subgenre of American Cinema

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-113
Author(s):  
Vera Vasilyevna Zharikova
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Youth Subculture ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
Auteur Cinema ◽  
The One ◽  
Film Genres

The article reviews film genres and the factors determining genre formation as exemplified by the subgenre of youth criminal drama. Like most genres, it appeared in the USA as an offshoot of the gangster film of the 1930s, on the one hand, and as a result of the emergence of youth subculture. The image of an adolescent criminal is still popular in both mass culture and auteur cinema.

Hawks, Howard (1896–1977)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Miguel García-Mainar
Keyword(s):  
Film Genre ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
Screwball Comedy ◽  
Studio Era ◽  
Classical Hollywood

Born Howard Winchester Hawks in Goshen, Indiana, to a wealthy industrialist family, he is considered one of the major directors of the classical Hollywood studio era. He was not a film stylist, but worked within mainstream studio formulas and avoided spectacular flourishes. Hawks was a versatile professional who excelled in every major film genre and contributed to establishing several of them, such as the gangster film with Scarface (1932), the screwball comedy with Bringing Up Baby (1938), or the adventure melodrama with Only Angels Have Wings (1939). His status changed from mere studio director to artist when French critics advocated the politique des auteurs in the 1950s and 1960s and hailed him, together with Alfred Hitchcock, as the paradigm of the American auteur. Henri Langlois (1963) considered him to be the leading modernist American director given that he embraced Functionalism and rejected Impressionism and ornament. To Peter Wollen, his films had the perfection of well-designed machines. His love of speed and aviation both confirmed him as the new modern man and revealed his taste for the values of traditional heroic adventure (1996: 8).

Finding the Right Problems: Some HREM Applications to Interfaces

1984 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 376-379
Author(s):  
D. Cherns
Keyword(s):  
Grain Boundaries ◽  
High Resolution Electron Microscopy ◽  
Boundary Structure ◽  
Atomic Structures ◽  
Grain Boundary Structure ◽  
Resolution Electron ◽  
Point To Point ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Better Than

The use of high resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to determine the atomic structure of grain boundaries and interfaces is a topic of great current interest. Grain boundary structure has been considered for many years as central to an understanding of the mechanical and transport properties of materials. Some more recent attention has focussed on the atomic structures of metalsemiconductor interfaces which are believed to control electrical properties of contacts. The atomic structures of interfaces in semiconductor or metal multilayers is an area of growing interest for understanding the unusual electrical or mechanical properties which these new materials possess. However, although the point-to-point resolutions of currently available HREMs, ∼2-3Å, appear sufficient to solve many of these problems, few atomic models of grain boundaries and interfaces have been derived. Moreover, with a new generation of 300-400kV instruments promising resolutions in the 1.6-2.0 Å range, and resolutions better than 1.5Å expected from specialist instruments, it is an appropriate time to consider the usefulness of HREM for interface studies.

Total etch dentin bonding systems: scanning electron microscopy of the resin-dentin hybrid layer

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 1092-1093
Author(s):  
Jorge Perdigao
Keyword(s):  
Composite Resin ◽  
Mechanical Interlocking ◽  
Hybrid Layer ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Dentin Bonding ◽  
Acid Agent ◽  
Bond Strengths ◽  
Main Component ◽  
Bonding Systems ◽  
New Generation

In 1955, Buonocore introduced the etching of enamel with phosphoric acid. Bonding to enamel was created by mechanical interlocking of resin tags with enamel prisms. Enamel is an inert tissue whose main component is hydroxyapatite (98% by weight). Conversely, dentin is a wet living tissue crossed by tubules containing cellular extensions of the dental pulp. Dentin consists of 18% of organic material, primarily collagen. Several generations of dentin bonding systems (DBS) have been studied in the last 20 years. The dentin bond strengths associated with these DBS have been constantly lower than the enamel bond strengths. Recently, a new generation of DBS has been described. They are applied in three steps: an acid agent on enamel and dentin (total etch technique), two mixed primers and a bonding agent based on a methacrylate resin. They are supposed to bond composite resin to wet dentin through dentin organic component, forming a peculiar blended structure that is part tooth and part resin: the hybrid layer.

Low-voltage, high-resolution scanning electron microscopy of polymers

1987 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 466-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Krause ◽  
W.W. Adams ◽  
S. Kumar ◽  
T. Reilly ◽  
T. Suziki
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscopy ◽  
Low Voltage ◽  
Chromatic Aberration ◽  
Image Resolution ◽  
Resolution Limit ◽  
Crossover Point ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Beam Damage ◽  
Scanning Electron

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of polymers at routine operating voltages of 15 to 25 keV can lead to beam damage and sample image distortion due to charging. Imaging polymer samples with low accelerating voltages (0.1 to 2.0 keV), at or near the “crossover point”, can reduce beam damage, eliminate charging, and improve contrast of surface detail. However, at low voltage, beam brightness is reduced and image resolution is degraded due to chromatic aberration. A new generation of instruments has improved brightness at low voltages, but a typical SEM with a tungsten hairpin filament will have a resolution limit of about 100nm at 1keV. Recently, a new field emission gun (FEG) SEM, the Hitachi S900, was introduced with a reported resolution of 0.8nm at 30keV and 5nm at 1keV. In this research we are reporting the results of imaging coated and uncoated polymer samples at accelerating voltages between 1keV and 30keV in a tungsten hairpin SEM and in the Hitachi S900 FEG SEM.

3-Dimensional immunolabeling and in situ hybridization detection using fluorescence photooxidation and intermediate-voltage Electron Microscopy

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 164-165
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Deerinck ◽  
Maryann E. Martone ◽  
Varda Lev-Ram ◽  
David P. L. Green ◽  
Roger Y. Tsien ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Laser Scanning ◽  
Reactive Oxygen ◽  
Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope ◽  
Fluorescent Dye ◽  
Confocal Laser ◽  
3 Dimensional ◽  
Voltage Electron ◽  
Dimensional Distribution ◽  
Electron Microscopes ◽  
New Generation

The confocal laser scanning microscope has become a powerful tool in the study of the 3-dimensional distribution of proteins and specific nucleic acid sequences in cells and tissues. This is also proving to be true for a new generation of high contrast intermediate voltage electron microscopes (IVEM). Until recently, the number of labeling techniques that could be employed to allow examination of the same sample with both confocal and IVEM was rather limited. One method that can be used to take full advantage of these two technologies is fluorescence photooxidation. Specimens are labeled by a fluorescent dye and viewed with confocal microscopy followed by fluorescence photooxidation of diaminobenzidine (DAB). In this technique, a fluorescent dye is used to photooxidize DAB into an osmiophilic reaction product that can be subsequently visualized with the electron microscope. The precise reaction mechanism by which the photooxidation occurs is not known but evidence suggests that the radiationless transfer of energy from the excited-state dye molecule undergoing the phenomenon of intersystem crossing leads to the formation of reactive oxygen species such as singlet oxygen. It is this reactive oxygen that is likely crucial in the photooxidation of DAB.

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