Performing Arts

When Dr. No premiered at the London Pavilion on October 5, 1962, no one predicted that it would launch the longest-running series in cinema history. It introduced the James Bond formula that has been a box-office fixture ever since: sensational plots, colorful locations, beautiful women, diabolical villains, thrilling action set pieces, and a tongue-in-cheek tone. An explosive cocktail of action, spectacle, and sex, Dr. No transformed popular cinema.

James Chapman provides a lively and comprehensive study of Dr. No, marshaling a wealth of archival research to place the film in its historical moment. He demonstrates that, contrary to many fan myths, the film was the product of a carefully considered transnational production process. Chapman explores the British super-spy’s origins in Ian Fleming’s snobbery-with-violence thrillers, examining the process of adaptation from page to screen. He considers Dr. No in the contexts of the UK and Hollywood film industries as well as the film’s place in relation to the changing social and cultural landscape of the 1960s, particularly Cold War anxieties and the decline of the British Empire. The book also analyzes the film’s problematic politics of gender and race and considers its cultural legacy.

This thorough and insightful account of Dr. No will appeal to film historians and Bond fans alike.

The course of events is predetermined and cannot be changed. Forces beyond our control—or even our comprehension—shape our fates. Such is the deterministic worldview embedded in a wide swath of contemporary cinema, from arthouse experiments to popular genre films, through both thematic concerns and narrative structures. These films, especially the recent spate of “elevated” science fiction and horror, tap into this deep-seated anxiety by focusing on characters who ultimately fail to transcend the patterns and structures that define them.

Thomas M. Puhr identifies and analyzes the ways that cinema has dealt with the tension between fate and free will, from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. He examines films that express deterministic ideas, including circular narratives of stasis or confinement and fatalistic portraits of external forces dictating characters’ lives. Puhr considers determinism at the levels of the individual, the family, and society, reading films in which characters are trapped by past or alternate selves, the burdens of family histories, or oppressive social structures. He explores how films such as Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Jordan Peele’s Us, and Lucrecia Martel’s Zama confront the limits of human agency. Puhr relates deterministic themes to the nature of moviegoing: In denying characters any ability to choose alternative paths, these films mirror how viewers themselves can only sit and watch.

Recasting the works of some of today’s most compelling directors, Fate in Film is an innovative critical account of an unrecognized yet crucial aspect of contemporary cinema.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance.

This book provides the most complete account of Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson’s recurring thematic preoccupations—the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley—as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson’s films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance.

This book provides the most complete account of Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson’s recurring thematic preoccupations—the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley—as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson’s films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.

Have digital technologies transformed cinema into a new art, or do they simply replicate and mimic analogue, film-based cinema? Newly revised and expanded to take the latest developments into account, Cinema in the Digital Age examines the fate of cinema in the wake of the digital revolution. Nicholas Rombes considers Festen (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Timecode (2000), Russian Ark (2002), and The Ring (2002), among others. Haunted by their analogue pasts, these films are interested not in digital purity but rather in imperfection and mistakes—blurry or pixilated images, shaky camera work, and other elements that remind viewers of the human behind the camera.

With a new introduction and new material, this updated edition takes a fresh look at the historical and contemporary state of digital cinema. It pays special attention to the ways in which nostalgia for the look and feel of analogue disrupts the aesthetics of the digital image, as well as how recent films such as The Social Network (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)—both shot digitally—have disguised and erased their digital foundations. The book also explores new possibilities for writing about and theorizing film, such as randomization.

Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim.

Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim.

Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Cinema has always engaged with the experiences, hopes, fears, and anxieties of—and about—adolescents, teenagers, and young people. This book is a comprehensive and accessible history of the depiction of teenagers in American film, from the silent era to the twenty-first century.

Timothy Shary explores the development of teenage roles across eras and industrial cycles, such as the juvenile delinquent pictures of the 1950s, the beach movies of the 1960s, the horror films of the 1980s, and the fantasy epics of the 2000s. He considers the varied genres of the teen movie—horror and melodrama, romance and adventure, fantasy and science fiction—and its shifting themes and tropes around sex and gender, childhood and adulthood, rebellion and social order, crime and consumer culture. Teen Movies features analyses of films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Splendor in the Grass (1961), Carrie (1976), The Breakfast Club (1985), American Pie (1999), and the Twilight series (2008–2012).

This second edition is updated throughout and features a new chapter examining Millennials and Generation Z on screen, with discussions of many contemporary topics, including queer youth in movies like Moonlight (2016), abortion in films such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), and the flourishing of a “tween” cinema as seen in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023).

For over six decades, James Bond has been a fixture of global culture, universally recognizable by the films’ combination of action set pieces, sex, political intrigue, and outrageous gadgetry. But as the British Empire entered the final stages of collapse, as the Cold War wound down and the “War on Terror” began, and as the visions of masculinity and femininity the series presented began to strike many viewers as outdated, the Bond formula has adapted to the changing times. Spanning the franchise’s entire history, from Sean Connery’s iconic swagger to Daniel Craig’s rougher, more visceral interpretation of the superspy, James Bond Will Return offers both academic readers and fans a comprehensive view of the series’s transformations against the backdrop of real-world geopolitical intrigue and sweeping social changes.

Leading scholars consider each of the twenty-five films in the series, showing how and why Bond has changed and what elements of the formula have stood the test of time. Each chapter examines a single film from a distinct position, giving readers a full picture of the variety and breadth of the longest-running series in cinema history. Close formal readings; production histories; tracings of the political, social, and historical influences; analyses of the series’ use of then-new filmmaking technologies; reflections on the star personas that have been built around the character—these and many more approaches combine to produce a wide-ranging view of the James Bond film franchise. Essential reading for Bond scholars and aficionados alike, James Bond Will Return brings out the many surprising complexities of an iconic character.

For over six decades, James Bond has been a fixture of global culture, universally recognizable by the films’ combination of action set pieces, sex, political intrigue, and outrageous gadgetry. But as the British Empire entered the final stages of collapse, as the Cold War wound down and the “War on Terror” began, and as the visions of masculinity and femininity the series presented began to strike many viewers as outdated, the Bond formula has adapted to the changing times. Spanning the franchise’s entire history, from Sean Connery’s iconic swagger to Daniel Craig’s rougher, more visceral interpretation of the superspy, James Bond Will Return offers both academic readers and fans a comprehensive view of the series’s transformations against the backdrop of real-world geopolitical intrigue and sweeping social changes.

Leading scholars consider each of the twenty-five films in the series, showing how and why Bond has changed and what elements of the formula have stood the test of time. Each chapter examines a single film from a distinct position, giving readers a full picture of the variety and breadth of the longest-running series in cinema history. Close formal readings; production histories; tracings of the political, social, and historical influences; analyses of the series’ use of then-new filmmaking technologies; reflections on the star personas that have been built around the character—these and many more approaches combine to produce a wide-ranging view of the James Bond film franchise. Essential reading for Bond scholars and aficionados alike, James Bond Will Return brings out the many surprising complexities of an iconic character.