Overview

This book focuses on the most successful feature films of John Carney, namely Once (2006), Begin Again (2013) and Sing Street (2016). Drawing on narrative, formalist and genre theories of film, the book presents an in-depth examination of how the formal and stylistic choices made by Carney allow each film to narrate a story in a coherent way. It shows how aural and visual contrivances are hidden behind a façade of realism, and how the films engage with universal, national and personal concerns and also how they relate to each other and to Irish and American film in general. It also explores the textual articulation of genre in each and the discrepancies between such articulation, the genre expectations set up by the promotional discourse coming from the publicity materials and events accompanying each release, and the genre labelling of each film in contemporary reviews by professional critics from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland.

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9781803741352

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Reviews

The Great Pretenders: Genre, Form, and Style in the Film Musicals of John Carney In this deeply fascinating account of the film musicals of John Carney, we explore the riches of story, form and aesthetics to hear and see how song occupies the spaces of nostalgia in a late modern national and transnational context where social relations have been rendered ephemeral. The Great Pretenders engages in some truly beautiful moments of textual analysis, offering us a new appreciation of the modern film musical – one that is rooted to the past, but which affectively moves us into and beyond digital dematerialisation and for what counts as authenticity. Ireland’s own national imaginary is read against the grain of Hollywood, while Carney’s authorship itself sits in a liminal state: his voice wet with Irish lyricism, and its notes saturated in the new conditions of modern filmmaking and social life. A brilliant book. Menendez-Otero’s fascinating study of Carney’s musicals delivers a wealth of research into the films’ production, marketing and reception, alongside incisive commentary and critical analysis. The book ably makes the case for the significance of Carney’s work in the contemporary renewal of the musical and of Irish cinema. Dr Karen McNally London Metropolitan University

Author Information

Carlos Menéndez-Otero holds PhDs in English studies and in communications and journalism. He is a member of the research group «Otras Lenguas» (OLE-6) and an associate professor at the Faculties of Humanities, and Commerce, Tourism, and Social Sciences at the University of Oviedo, Spain. His main research relates to the Irish audiovisual industry and classic Hollywood and British films about Ireland and its diaspora, on which he has published over twenty papers and the volume Irlanda y los irlandeses en el cine popular (1910–1970) (2017). Other interests include Irish and Irish-American history and culture, dubbing, television series, regional television, film criticism, and ESP learning and teaching. His most recent work before the present book is the co-edited (with Raquel Serrano-González) volume Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain: Notes on a Shared History (2021), also published by Peter Lang.

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