Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)

This book examines the ways in which the house appears in films and the modes by which it moves beyond being merely a backdrop for action. Specifically, it explores the ways that domestic spaces carry inherent connotations that filmmakers exploit to enhance meanings and pleasures within film. Rather than simply examining the representation of the house as national symbol, auteur trait, or in terms of genre, contributors study various rooms in the domestic sphere from an assortment of time periods and from a diversity of national cinemas―from interior spaces in ancient Rome to the Chinese kitchen, from the animated house to the metaphor of the armchair in __film noir__. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Carl’s Moving Castle: “Animated” Houses and the Renovation of Play in Up (2009) 2 Peas, Parsnips, and Patriotism: Images of the Garden in the Second World War 3 “King for a Day”: Performance and Expression in the Cinematic Space of the Basement 4 Kim in the Sitting Room: The Function of Domestic Space in the Construction of Star Image 5 At Home with the Caesars: The Emperor Tiberius and the Ambiguity of Place in Historical and Epic Films 6 The Dining Room: Authenticity, Immersion, and Reproduction? 7 A Drama of Solitude: The Library as Cocoon in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece 8 Reframing the Material and Imaginative Geographies of the Home: Chinese Filmmaker Liu Jiayin's [(omitted)] Oxhide II [(omitted)](2009) 9 Furnishing the Living Room in Film Noir: Disillusion and the Armchair 10 Whither Shall I Wander? Up and Down the Staircase in Film 11 Intimate Spaces, Extimate Subjects: The Bedroom in Horror Films 12 A Room Going Spare: Lodgers, Nannies, and Strangers in the House 13 Monstrous Men and Bathroom Mirrors: The Bathroom as Revelatory Space in American Cinema 14 Secrets, Memory, and Imagination: Psychic Space and the Cinematic Attic Contributors Bibliography Index "This book examines the ways in which the house appears in films and the modes by which it moves beyond being merely a backdrop for action. Specifically, it explores the ways that domestic spaces carry inherent connotations that filmmakers exploit to enhance meanings and pleasures within film. Rather than simply examining the representation of the house as national symbol, auteur trait, or in terms of genre, contributors study various rooms in the domestic sphere from an assortment of time periods and from a diversity of national cinemas-from interior spaces in ancient Rome to the Chinese kitchen, from the animated house to the metaphor of the armchair in film noir." -- First fly leaf