Robert B. Pippin

Douglas Sirk (eBook, ePUB)

Filmmaker and Philosopher

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

It would be easy to dismiss the films of Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) as brilliant examples of mid-century melodrama with little to say to the contemporary world. Yet Robert Pippin argues that, far from being marginal pieces of sentimentality, Sirk's films are rich with irony, insight and depth. Indeed Sirk's films, often celebrated as classics of the genre, are attempts to subvert rather than conform to rules of conventional melodrama.

The visual style, story and characters of films like All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life are explored to argue for Sirk as an incredibly nuanced moral thinker. Instead of imposing moralising judgements on his characters, Sirk presents them as people who do 'wrong' things often without understanding why or how, creating a complex and unsettling ethics. Pippin argues that it this moral ambiguity and ironic richness enables Sirk to produce films that grapple with important themes such as race, class and gender with real force and political urgency.

Douglas Sirk: Filmmaker and Philosopher argues for a filmmaker who was a 'disruptive not restorative' auteur and one who broke the rules in the most interesting and subtle of ways.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 168
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. April 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350195691
• Artikelnr.: 61099781

Autorenporträt

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Filmed Through Thought: Cinema as Reflective Form (2019), Hegel's Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in "The Science of Logic"(2018), The Philosophical Hitchcock (2017) and Fatalism in American Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy (2012)

Inhaltsangabe

preface acknowledgements Chapter One. Introduction: Irony as Subversion
Chapter Two. Love and Class in All That Heaven Allows Chapter Three.
Misplaced Moralism in Written on the Wind Chapter Four. Living Theater in
Imitation of Life Conclusion bibliography index