Overview

This collection focuses on 1970s films from a variety of countries, and from the marginal to the mainstream, which, by tackling various ‘difficult’ subjects, have proved to be controversial in one way or another. It is not an uncritical celebration of the shocking and the subversive but an attempt to understand why this decade produced films which many found shocking, and what it was that made them shocking to certain audiences. To this end it includes not only films that shocked the conventionally minded, such as hard core pornography, but also those that outraged liberal opinion – for example, Death Wish and Dirty Harry. The book does not simply cast a critical light on a series of controversial films which have been variously maligned, misinterpreted or just plain ignored, but also assesses how their production values, narrative features and critical receptions can be linked to the wider historical and social forces that were dominant during this decade. Furthermore, it explores how these films resonate in our own historical moment – replete as it is with shocks of all kinds.

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9781350194489

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It's hardly shocking that two of the UK's most distinguished film journalists have produced this impressive new edition of a film book which has long been an essential component of any cineaste's shelves. --Crime Time

Author Information

Julian Petley is emeritus and honorary professor of journalism at Brunel University London. He is the principal editor of the Journal of British Cinema and Television. His books include Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (2011), Censorship: A Beginner’s Guide (2009) and the co-authored Culture Wars: The Media and the British Left (2019). Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies at Birmingham City University, UK, from where he runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival. He is editor of Shocking Cinema of the Seventies (2002), co-editor of Alternative Europe (2004) and Underground USA (2002).

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