Conversations with John Schlesinger

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Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0307430847
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Conversations with John Schlesinger by : Ian Buruma

Download or read book Conversations with John Schlesinger written by Ian Buruma and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I like the surprise of the curtain going up, revealing what’s behind it.” –John Schlesinger The British director John Schlesinger was one of the cinema’s most dynamic and influential artists. Now, in Conversations with John Schlesinger, acclaimed writer Ian Buruma, Schlesinger’s nephew, reveals the director’s private world in a series of in-depth interviews conducted in the later years of the director’s life. Here they discuss the impact of Schlesinger’s personal life on his art. As his films so readily demonstrate, Schlesinger is a wonderful storyteller, and he serves up fascinating and provocative recollections of growing up in a Jewish family during World War II, his sexual coming-of-age as a gay man in conformist 1950s England, his emergence as an artist in the “Swinging 60s,” and the roller-coaster ride of his career as one of the most prominent Hollywood directors of his time. Schlesinger also discusses his artistic philosophy and approach to filmmaking, recounting stories from the sets of his masterpieces, including Midnight Cowboy; Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Marathon Man; and The Day of the Locust. He shares what it was like to direct such stars as Dustin Hoffman, John Voight, Sean Penn, Madonna, and Julie Christie (whom Schlesinger is credited with discovering) and offers his thoughts on the fickle nature of fame and success in Hollywood. Packed with wit and keen insight into the artistic mind, Conversations with John Schlesinger is not just the candid story of a dynamic and eventful life but the true measure of an extraordinary person.

The Films of John Schlesinger

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Author :
Publisher : Anthem Press
ISBN 13 : 1783089792
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis The Films of John Schlesinger by : Julia Prewitt Brown

Download or read book The Films of John Schlesinger written by Julia Prewitt Brown and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-08-24 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city, with its manifold distractions and violence, its invitation to intoxication and dream, had long served to represent the experience of modernity in works of art at the time John Schlesinger made his acclaimed urban documentary ‘Terminus’ in 1961. To be a reader of the city was to be a reader of modern life, and Schlesinger was a discriminating, at times relentless, reader of the city throughout his career, especially in his three greatest films, ‘Midnight Cowboy’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘The Day of the Locust’, set in New York, London and Los Angeles, respectively. His character-driven stories, evocation of the significance of the everyday, and insistence on ambiguities of situation and motive – all qualities he was known for – point to literary influences that reach back to the nineteenth century and earlier. ‘The Films of John Schlesinger’ is not only the first book to fully acknowledge those influences, but also the first book to explicate the power of his art to capture the modern, urban experiences of becoming an adult in an atmosphere that relentlessly promotes fantasies of success and wealth; of coming to terms with one’s national identity in the context of international politics; and of attempting to transform the past, both personal and cultural, into a viable present.

Edge of Midnight

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Publisher : Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9780823084692
Total Pages : 660 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (846 download)

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Book Synopsis Edge of Midnight by : William J. Mann

Download or read book Edge of Midnight written by William J. Mann and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the life and career of the British motion picture director of such films as "Midnight Cowboy" and "Marathon Man."

A World Trimmed with Fur

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503600688
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis A World Trimmed with Fur by : Jonathan Schlesinger

Download or read book A World Trimmed with Fur written by Jonathan Schlesinger and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, booming demand for natural resources transformed China and its frontiers. Historians of China have described this process in stark terms: pristine borderlands became breadbaskets. Yet Manchu and Mongolian archives reveal a different story. Well before homesteaders arrived, wild objects from the far north became part of elite fashion, and unprecedented consumption had exhausted the region's most precious resources. In A World Trimmed with Fur, Jonathan Schlesinger uses these diverse archives to reveal how Qing rule witnessed not the destruction of unspoiled environments, but their invention. Qing frontiers were never pristine in the nineteenth century—pearlers had stripped riverbeds of mussels, mushroom pickers had uprooted the steppe, and fur-bearing animals had disappeared from the forest. In response, the court turned to "purification;" it registered and arrested poachers, reformed territorial rule, and redefined the boundary between the pristine and the corrupted. Schlesinger's resulting analysis provides a framework for rethinking the global invention of nature.

John Schlesinger

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 14 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (922 download)

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Book Synopsis John Schlesinger by :

Download or read book John Schlesinger written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Films of John Schlesinger

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781783089789
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (897 download)

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Book Synopsis The Films of John Schlesinger by : Julia Prewitt Brown

Download or read book The Films of John Schlesinger written by Julia Prewitt Brown and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great historical and economic transformations of the late twentieth-century city are vividly reflected in John Schlesinger's oeuvre. In films of the early sixties 'A Kind of Loving' and 'Billy Liar', the city was imagined as industrial and residential, with the characters confronting life on the local and familial level. In 'Darling', 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', films made from 1965 to 1971, the city had become cosmopolitan, ruled over by international finance and riven by class tensions. And in two films of the eighties 'The Falcon and the Snowman' and 'Madame Sousatzka', Schlesinger was emphatic in showing the desperation with which youthful characters struggled to come of age, not in a local urban environment, but in a national and global one. The specific economic and political forces driving these urban changes have been extensively treated in the growing body of scholarship on the 'cinematic city'. While these forces form an important backdrop to 'The Films of John Schlesinger', the aim of the book overall is to demonstrate the centrality of Schlesinger's aesthetic imagination, but not as something divorced from political, moral and historical life. The distinguished British cinematographer Billy Williams once described Schlesinger as the 'most complete' director he ever worked with. Schlesinger combined a directorial 'eye' (mastery of camera movement, framing, editing, production design, etc.) with a profound literary sense (understanding of character and situation). He began his career with the award-winning documentary 'Terminus' (1961) and went on to make a total of seventeen feature films and five films for television. Several of his films had a genuinely innovative impact: Andy Warhol said that 'Midnight Cowboy' 'took a real drawing card from the underground' in the way it dealt with 'forbidden subjects'. Pauline Kael described 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' as 'a novel written on film' and, in being so, an entirely new achievement, 'instantly recognizable as a classic'. Other Schlesinger films are also of lasting interest: 'Billy Liar', reissued by Criterion in 2001, is a comic gem. 'The Day of the Locust' is taught in film schools today. Yet there is a dearth of intelligent conversation about these rich works. Contemporary reviews by leading film critics are insightful, as are selected articles and the sole full-length study of Schlesinger, which appeared years before his career ended. A full-scale 'interpretation' of what Schlesinger's oeuvre teaches us about modern life has yet to appear. Schlesinger's films have been undervalued for reasons that have little to do with their achievement: he fell out of favour in Hollywood, offended critics with his satire of American society and made a few relatively uninspired films just to keep working. The time is ripe for a revaluation of his oeuvre. 'The Films of John Schlesinger' engages the innovative content and form of the major films, and makes critical judgements identifying their strengths and weaknesses. It explores their major theme, which is the importance of survival, and of trying to make the best of what one has, particularly as this theme is played out in modern, urban society. It takes up different theories of film - that of Benjamin, Hansen and others - but it is not a theoretical analysis intended solely for academics.

John Schlesinger

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis John Schlesinger by : John Schlesinger

Download or read book John Schlesinger written by John Schlesinger and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

A Thousand Days

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Publisher : Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1112 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis A Thousand Days by : Arthur Meier Schlesinger (Jr.)

Download or read book A Thousand Days written by Arthur Meier Schlesinger (Jr.) and published by Boston : Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 1965 with total page 1112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Special Assistant to President Kennedy describes the historic events in which John F. Kennedy participated during his three years in the White House." --

Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393244717
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by : Richard Aldous

Download or read book Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian written by Richard Aldous and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major biography of preeminent historian and intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a defining figure in Kennedy’s White House. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), known today as the architect of John F. Kennedy’s presidential legacy, blazed an extraordinary path from Harvard University to wartime London to the West Wing. The son of a pioneering historian—and a two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner in his own right—Schlesinger redefined the art of presidential biography. A Thousand Days, his best-selling and immensely influential record of the Kennedy administration, cemented Schlesinger’s place as one of the nation’s greatest political image makers and a key figure of the American intellectual elite—a peer and contemporary of Reinhold Niebuhr, Isaiah Berlin, and Adlai Stevenson. The first major biography of this defining figure in Kennedy’s Camelot, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian presents a dramatic life and career set against the backdrop of the American Century. Biographer Richard Aldous draws on oral history, rarely seen archival documents, and the official Schlesinger papers to craft a portrait of the incandescently brilliant and controversial historian who framed America’s ascent to global empire.

John Schlesinger

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Author :
Publisher : Boston : Twayne Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis John Schlesinger by : Gene D. Phillips

Download or read book John Schlesinger written by Gene D. Phillips and published by Boston : Twayne Publishers. This book was released on 1981 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Shooting Midnight Cowboy

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374719217
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Shooting Midnight Cowboy by : Glenn Frankel

Download or read book Shooting Midnight Cowboy written by Glenn Frankel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Much more than a page-turner. It’s the first essential work of cultural history of the new decade." —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Publishers Weekly best book of 2021 The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author of the behind-the-scenes explorations of the classic American Westerns High Noon and The Searchers now reveals the history of the controversial 1969 Oscar-winning film that signaled a dramatic shift in American popular culture. Director John Schlesinger’s Darling was nominated for five Academy Awards, and introduced the world to the transcendently talented Julie Christie. Suddenly the toast of Hollywood, Schlesinger used his newfound clout to film an expensive, Panavision adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. Expectations were huge, making the movie’s complete critical and commercial failure even more devastating, and Schlesinger suddenly found himself persona non grata in the Hollywood circles he had hoped to conquer. Given his recent travails, Schlesinger’s next project seemed doubly daring, bordering on foolish. James Leo Herlihy’s novel Midnight Cowboy, about a Texas hustler trying to survive on the mean streets of 1960’s New York, was dark and transgressive. Perhaps something about the book’s unsparing portrait of cultural alienation resonated with him. His decision to film it began one of the unlikelier convergences in cinematic history, centered around a city that seemed, at first glance, as unwelcoming as Herlihy’s novel itself. Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy tells the story of a modern classic that, by all accounts, should never have become one in the first place. The film’s boundary-pushing subject matter—homosexuality, prostitution, sexual assault—earned it an X rating when it first appeared in cinemas in 1969. For Midnight Cowboy, Schlesinger—who had never made a film in the United States—enlisted Jerome Hellman, a producer coming off his own recent flop and smarting from a failed marriage, and Waldo Salt, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter with a tortured past. The decision to shoot on location in New York, at a time when the city was approaching its gritty nadir, backfired when a sanitation strike filled Manhattan with garbage fires and fears of dysentery. Much more than a history of Schlesinger’s film, Shooting Midnight Cowboy is an arresting glimpse into the world from which it emerged: a troubled city that nurtured the talents and ambitions of the pioneering Polish cinematographer Adam Holender and legendary casting director Marion Dougherty, who discovered both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight and supported them for the roles of “Ratso” Rizzo and Joe Buck—leading to one of the most intensely moving joint performances ever to appear on screen. We follow Herlihy himself as he moves from the experimental confines of Black Mountain College to the theatres of Broadway, influenced by close relationships with Tennessee Williams and Anaïs Nin, and yet unable to find lasting literary success. By turns madcap and serious, and enriched by interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema, but also the story of a country—and an industry—beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

White House Ghosts

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416565353
Total Pages : 595 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis White House Ghosts by : Robert Schlesinger

Download or read book White House Ghosts written by Robert Schlesinger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In White House Ghosts, veteran Washington reporter Robert Schlesinger opens a fresh and revealing window on the modern presidency from FDR to George W. Bush. This is the first book to examine a crucial and often hidden role played by the men and women who help presidents find the words they hope will define their places in history. Drawing on scores of interviews with White House scribes and on extensive archival research, Schlesinger weaves intimate, amusing, compelling stories that provide surprising insights into the personalities, quirks, egos, ambitions, and humor of these presidents as well as how well or not they understood the bully pulpit. White House Ghosts traces the evolution of the presidential speechwriter's job from Raymond Moley under FDR through such luminaries as Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., under JFK, Jack Valenti and Richard Goodwin under LBJ, William Safire and Pat Buchanan under Nixon, Hendrik Hertzberg and James Fallows under Carter, and Peggy Noonan under Reagan, to the "Troika" of Michael Gerson, John McConnell, and Matthew Scully under George W. Bush. White House Ghosts tells the fascinating inside stories behind some of the most iconic presidential phrases: the first inaugural of FDR ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself ") and JFK ("ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country"), Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" and Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speeches, Bill Clinton's ending "the era of big government" State of the Union, and George W. Bush's post-9/11 declaration that "whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done" -- and dozens of other noteworthy speeches. The book also addresses crucial questions surrounding the complex relationship between speechwriter and speechgiver, such as who actually crafted the most memorable phrases, who deserves credit for them, and who has claimed it. Schlesinger tells the story of the modern American presidency through this unique prism -- how our chief executives developed their very different rhetorical styles and how well they grasped the rewards of reaching out to the country. White House Ghosts is dramatic, funny, gripping, surprising, serious -- and always entertaining.

The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

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Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0679644636
Total Pages : 1111 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. by : Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Download or read book The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 1111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extraordinary collection gathers the never-before-seen correspondence of a true American original—the acclaimed historian and lion of the liberal establishment, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. An advisor to presidents, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and tireless champion of progressive government, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was also an inveterate letter writer. Indeed, the term “man of letters” could easily have been coined for Schlesinger, a faithful and prolific correspondent whose wide range of associates included powerful public officials, notable literary figures, prominent journalists, Hollywood celebrities, and distinguished fellow scholars. The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. reveals the late historian’s unvarnished views on the great issues and personalities of his time, from the dawn of the Cold War to the aftermath of September 11. Here is Schlesinger’s correspondence with such icons of American statecraft as Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, and, of course, John and Robert Kennedy (including a detailed critique of JFK’s manuscript for Profiles in Courage). There are letters to friends and confidants such as Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gore Vidal, William Styron, and Jacqueline Kennedy (to whom Schlesinger sends his handwritten condolences in the hours after her husband’s assassination), and exchanges with such unlikely pen pals as Groucho Marx, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bianca Jagger. Finally, there are Schlesinger’s many thoughtful replies to the inquiries of ordinary citizens, in which he offers his observations on influences, issues of the day, and the craft of writing history. Written with the range and insight that made Schlesinger an indispensable figure, these letters reflect the evolution of his thought—and of American liberalism—from the 1940s to the first decade of the new millennium. Whether he is arguing against the merits of preemptive war, advocating for a more forceful policy on civil rights, or simply explaining his preference in neckwear (“For sloppy eaters bow ties are a godsend”), Schlesinger reveals himself as a formidable debater and consummate wit who reveled in rhetorical combat. To a detractor who accuses him of being a Communist sympathizer, he writes: “If your letter was the product of sincere misunderstanding, the facts I have cited should relieve your mind. If not, I can only commend you to the nearest psychiatrist.” Elsewhere, he castigates a future Speaker of the House, John Boehner, for misattributing quotations to Abraham Lincoln. Combining a political strategist’s understanding of the present moment with a historian’s awareness that the eyes of posterity were always watching him, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., helped shape the course of an era with these letters. This landmark collection frames the remarkable dynamism of the twentieth-century and ensures that Schlesinger’s legacy will continue to influence this one. Praise for The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “Schlesinger’s political intelligence in his correspondence is excellent, the level of discourse and purpose high, the sense of responsibility as keen as the sense of fun. . . . The best letters—and there are many—come from the typewriter of the public Schlesinger, the fighting liberal, especially when he’s jousting with a provocative antagonist.”—George Packer, The New York Times Book Review “Arthur Schlesinger’s letters are full of personal, political, and historical insights into the tumultuous events and enormous personalities that dominated the mid-twentieth century.”—President Bill Clinton

The Imperial Presidency

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780618420018
Total Pages : 630 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Imperial Presidency by : Arthur Meier Schlesinger

Download or read book The Imperial Presidency written by Arthur Meier Schlesinger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

John Schlesinger

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780860432340
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (323 download)

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Book Synopsis John Schlesinger by : Nancy J. Brooker

Download or read book John Schlesinger written by Nancy J. Brooker and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema

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Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474423140
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema by : Farmer Richard Farmer

Download or read book Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema written by Farmer Richard Farmer and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over half a century on, the 1960s continue to generate strong intellectual and emotional responses - both positive and negative - and this is no less true in the arena of film. Making substantial use of new and underexplored archive resources that provide a wealth of information and insight on the period in question, this book offers a fresh perspective on the major resurgence of creativity and international appeal experienced by British cinema in that dramatic decade. Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema is the first scholarly volume on this period of British cinema for more than twenty-five years. It provides a major reconsideration of the period by focusing on the central tensions and contradiction between novelty/revolution and continuity/tradition during what remains a highly contentious period of cultural production and consumption.

Act of Creation

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786729708
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Act of Creation by : Stephen C Schlesinger

Download or read book Act of Creation written by Stephen C Schlesinger and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-24 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Act of Creation , Stephen C. Schlesinger tells a pivotal and little-known story of how Secretary of State Edward Stettinius and the new American President, Harry Truman, picked up the pieces of the faltering campaign initiated by Franklin Roosevelt to create a "United Nations." Using secret agents, financial resources, and their unrivaled position of power, they overcame the intrigues of Stalin, the reservations of wartime allies like Winston Churchill, the discontent of smaller states, and a skeptical press corps to found the United Nations. The author reveals how the UN nearly collapsed several times during the conference over questions of which states should have power, who should be admitted, and how authority should be divided among its branches. By shedding new light on leading participants like John Foster Dulles, John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, Nelson Rockefeller, and E. B White, Act of Creation provides a fascinating tale of twentieth-century history not to be missed.