Gaslight Melodrama: From Victorian London to 1940s Hollywood

Description

In 1945, a year when American crime films were apparently moving out on to the streets of contemporary Los Angeles and New York, one reviewer noted the emergence of a ‘cycle of mystery and horror pictures placed in the gaslight era of the turn of the century.’ For another, it seemed that for Hollywood there was ‘no world of today save the world of London by gaslight’. In Gaslight Melodrama, Guy Barefoot examines the films that gave rise to such comments, and the pattern of discourses that gave rise to such films. The book's main focus is provided by 1940s Hollywood melodramas such as Gaslight, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Hangover Square. It also discusses a related cycle of British films that located murder and melodrama amidstVictorian or Edwardian furnishings, and then looks beyond cinema to the Gothic novels of the 18th century, 19th century discussions of gaslighting in street, home and theater, and ambivalent 20th century responses to theVictorian era. Combining close analysis of particular film texts with attention to cinema's cultural context, Gaslight Melodrama provides an exploration of the ways in which the past has been the site of contested meaning, and an examination of the network of melodramatic narratives embedded within familiar and lesser-known examples of classical Hollywood cinema. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1 INTRODUCTION: GASLIGHT, GASLIGHT, AND GASLIGHT MELODRAMA 2 INDUSTRIAL LIGHT AND MAGIC: IMAGES OF GASLIGHT FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Gaslight and the Nineteenth Century From Stage to Screen Toward the Modern City 3 GOTHIC SOURCES/LONDON DISCOURSES: THE DARK METROPOLIS ON PAGE AND SCREEN Nineteenth-Century London at 20th Century-Fox Londonania Descent and Invention From the Medieval to the Suburban 4 LADY ISABEL, DR. JEKYLL, AND OTHER VICTORIANS: TWENTIETH-CENTURY RECEPTION, REACTION, AND RECONSTRUCTION Jekyll and Hyde America Britain Victorians, Vampires, and Piano Legs 5 THE FURNITURE IN THE ATTIC: BACK TO THE VICTORIAN The Process of Historical Reconstruction Victoria the Great New Victorian and Neo-Victorianism Surrealism, Lost Forms, Hollywood Elegance, Wretchedness, and Age 6 THE BODY IN THE CANAL: DECORUM AND MELODRAMA IN THE PERIOD FILM House by the River Ivy and Others The Suspect Critque and Closure 7 MELODRAMA AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PAST Notes Gaslight Filmography Bibliography INDEX