Gestures of Love: Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema

Description

Examines movie romance in light of our emotional bond to the actors and characters on screen. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prelude Little Bursting Bubbles Introduction: The Actor’s Heartbeat The Beating Heart of Mise-en-Scène A Matter of Time Sketching Love Unqualified Surrenders, Mirroring Replies Part I: Screwball Love 1. Love’s Final Irony: John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century 2. Wicked Jaws, Lanky Brunettes: Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man and Libeled Lady 3. “You Look So Silly”: Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, Bringing Up Baby, and The Philadelphia Story Part II: Noir Amour 4. Love’s Possession: Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney in Laura 5. Wooing Bogie, Courting Bacall: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo Part III: Love and Melodrama 6. Lipstick on a Teacup: Performance in Vincente Minnelli’s The Cobweb and Tea and Sympathy 7. Hudson, Bacall, Stack, Malone: Love and Gesture in Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind Coda: Modern Love Works Cited Index