Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema
Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films’ intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the "long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts.

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Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema
Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films’ intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the "long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts.

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Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema

Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema

by Vito Adriaensens
Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema

Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema

by Vito Adriaensens

Hardcover

$120.00 
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Overview

Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films’ intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the "long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781474406987
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 11/08/2023
Series: Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Vito Adriaensens is a scholar and filmmaker. He is currently Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: History, Intermediality and Early European Cinema

  1. The Birth of a Sixth Art: The Art Film and the Film-as-Art Discourse
  2. Behind the Velvet Curtain: The Cultural Communion between Stage and Screen
  3. An Actress for Our Age: Betty Nansen, Modern Media Icon
  4. In Another Light: Academic Painting, Pictorial Photography, Bourgeois Cinema
  5. Old Masters Endure: Victor Sjöström’s Netherlandish Tableaux

Conclusion: Towards a Cultural Poetics of Early European Cinema

Bibliography and Filmography

About the Author

Index

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