Crooked, but Never Common

The Films of Preston Sturges
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-231-20729-4
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 376 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 139 mm x 214 mm, Gewicht: 678 g

In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948—The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek among them—all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day. Yet despite this acclaim, Sturges’s achievements remain underappreciated: he is too often categorized as a dialogue writer and plot engineer more than a director, or belittled as an irresponsible spinner of laughs.

In Crooked, but Never Common, Stuart Klawans combines a critic’s insight and a fan’s enthusiasm to offer deeper ways to think about and enjoy Sturges’s work. He provides an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director’s major movies, presenting Sturges as a filmmaker whose work balanced slapstick and social critique, American and European traditions, and cynicism and affection for his characters. Tugging at loose threads—discontinuities, puzzles, and allusions that have dangled in plain sight—and putting the films into a broader cultural context, Klawans reveals structures, motives, and meanings underlying the uproarious pleasures of Sturges’s movies. In this new light, Sturges emerges at last as one of the truly great filmmakers—and funnier than ever.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Klawans, Stuart

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Einzelne Filmschauspieler, Filmregisseure, Drehbuchautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmproduktion, Filmtechnik
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Instead of an Introduction: A Rhetoric of Preston Sturges
2. Ya Can’t Get Away from Arithmetic: The Great McGinty
3. He Thinks He Has Ideas: Christmas in July
4. I’m Not a Poet, I’m an Ophiologist: The Lady Eve
5. As You Are, So Shall You Remain: Sullivan’s Travels
6. Topic A: The Palm Beach Story
7. Homo Sapiens, the Wise Guy: Triumph Over Pain
8. Psycholology: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
9. That’s All You Know How to Hurt: Hail the Conquering Hero
10. You Arouse the Artist in Me: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
11. Every Emotion Was Exaggerated: Unfaithfully Yours
12. Instead of a Conclusion: A Genealogy of Preston Sturges
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Stuart Klawans was the longtime film critic for the Nation, for which he received a National Magazine Award. He is the author of Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order (1999) and has contributed to the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Film Comment, and Parnassus: Poetry in Review.