A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films

Author:   Gerd Gemunden
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Volume:   5
ISBN:  

9781845454180


Pages:   206
Publication Date:   01 April 2008
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films


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Overview

With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.

Full Product Details

Author:   Gerd Gemunden
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
Volume:   5
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9781845454180


ISBN 10:   1845454189
Pages:   206
Publication Date:   01 April 2008
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1. An Accented Cinema Chapter 2. The Insurance Man Always Rings Twice: Double Indemnity (1944) Chapter 3. In the Ruins of Berlins: A Foreign Affair (1948) Chapter 4. Ghosting Hollywood: Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Fedora (1978) Chapter 5. All Dressed Up and Running Wild: Some Like It Hot (1959) Chapter 6. Being a Mensch in the Administered World: The Apartment (1960) Chapter 7. In the Closet of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Chronology Filmography Bibliography Index

Reviews

Gemunden's vital decoding of Wilder's translation of himself into the American vernacular offers stimulating new material and perspectives that will no doubt shape Wilder scholarship to come. * Austrian Studies Newsletter Billy Wilder is hard to trump, because everything one writes about him is only half as entertaining as his great sense of humor. Gerd Gemunden, however, achieves a small miracle: his A Foreign Affair is a highly readable yet serious critical study that reveals Wilder, the alleged cynic, as the moralist he really was. * Volker Schlondorff


Author Information

Gerd Gemunden is Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and Professor of German Studies, Film Studies, and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination (1998) and editor of volumes on Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Douglas Sirk, as well as an anthology of critical writings on Marlene Dietrich.

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