Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film - Softcover

Rhodes, John David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 151790370X ISBN 13: 9781517903701

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2017

Synopsis

Much of our time at the movies is spent in other people’s homes. Cinema is, after all, often about everyday life. Spectacle of Property is the first book to address the question of the ubiquitous conjuncture of the moving image and its domestic architecture. Arguing that in cinema we pay to occupy spaces we cannot occupy, John David Rhodes explores how the house in cinema both structures and criticizes fantasies of property and ownership.

Rhodes tells the story of the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at private property onscreen, analyzing the security and ease the house promises along with the horrible anxieties it produces. He begins by laying out a theory of film spectatorship that proposes the concept of the “spectator-tenant,” with reference to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons. The book continues with three chapters that are each occupied with a different architectural style and the films that make use of it: the bungalow, the modernist house, and the shingle style house. Rhodes considers a variety of canonical films rarely analyzed side by side, such as Psycho in relation to Grey Gardens and Meet Me in St. Louis. Among the other films discussed are Meshes of the Afternoon, Mildred Pierce, A Star Is Born, Killer of Sheep, and A Single Man.

Bringing together film history, film theory, and architectural history as no book has to date, Spectacle of Property marks a new milestone in examining cinema’s relationship to realism while leaving us vastly more informed about, if less at home inside, the houses we occupy at the movies.

About this title

About the Author

John David Rhodes teaches at the University of Cambridge, where he is director of the Centre for Film and Screen. He is author of Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome and coeditor of Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image, both from Minnesota.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 151790370X
• ISBN 13: 9781517903701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288