Popular European Cinema Book

While popular European cinema is strongly linked with the dominant American version of popular film, it cannot be read simply as Hollywood in foreign dress. The styles, stars, and genres of popular European cinema--Swedish melodrama, Italian horror movies, French musicals--all have their own conventions, superficially similar to Hollywood and yet certainly distinct from it.There has been surprisingly little scholarship done on popular European cinema as both art and social document. Popular European Cinema seeks to fill this gap while illuminating two compelling contemporary issues: the nature of the popular, and the new Europe.Popular European Cinema examines the reasons why films that are most popular with audiences in any one European country are seldom successful elsewhere. Audiences themselves represent diverse class, gender, and ethnic identities that complicate the question of national cinema, not least with recent developments in formerly communist Eastern Europe and post-colonialist Western Europe. Through their individual studies, the contributors open up a new area of study, using the medium of film to focus a wider discussion of popular European culture.Read More