The American art cinema, 1965 - 2005

This rich and insightful book offers a refreshing perspective on American art cinema since 1965. With elegance, clarity, and rigor film critic Robert Cardullo analyzes and interprets the biggest art-house classics from Peckinpah and Lumet to Jarmusch, Soderbergh, and Lynch with a compassionate mind. Favoring a humanistic approach to the reading of independent U. S. filmmaking, The American Art Cinema presents close readings that go far beyond the naive stargazing of popular film reviews but also resist the oracular theoretical pronouncements favored by purely academic film studies. Including three long retrospective essays and twenty review articles featuring many of the most significant independent movies from 1965 to 2005, Cardullo ultimately aims to explain how some American moviemakers continue to use the resources of the medium to pursue complex, significant humanistic goals. From the Contents: * Through the Looking Glass: The American Art Cinema in an Age of Social Change * Actor-Directors at Work and Play: Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade and John Turturr's Mac * On the Road Again: The Road Film and the Two Coppolas Shooting the City: The Gangster, Manhattanites, and the Movies