Picturing Dorian Gray: Portrait of an Adaptation

The Picture of Dorian Gray constitue un sujet de choix pour les cineastes, et ce, pour de nombreuses raisons : il s’agit d’un conte moral captivant, dote d’une intrigue qui regorge de beaute, d’amour et d’action ; c’est un exemple celebre de texte victorien influence en partie par le roman « gothique ». Le roman de Wilde a ainsi inspire de nombreuses generations de cineastes. Toutefois, cette œuvre pose aux realisateurs des problemes particuliers, dont un est suggere par le titre meme de l’ouvrage : comment representer le portrait extraordinaire de Dorian Gray a l’ecran, tant dans sa beaute eclatante initiale que dans ses metamorphoses monstrueuses ? Chacune des adaptations etudiees dans ce…

Book Review: Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, and Fans

ReviewingMildred Pierce(Todd Haynes, HBO, 2011) in the Age of Postfeminism

Adapted from Todd Haynes's perspective, James M. Cain's ironical take on a woman's desire for power in Mildred Pierce turns into a self-reflexive drama about the politics of postfeminism. This arti...

Hollywood by Hollywood: the backstudio picture and the mystique of making movies

In comparison with some of its other great genres, what Steve Cohan terms ‘the backstudio picture’ has been relatively unexplored in film studies, though screen fictions that focus on the film indu...

L’enseignement en chantier : la série télévisée à l’université

International audience

Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtual consummation in the series Moonlighting

The 1980s series Moonlighting was one of the first dramedies on the small screen; it took its cue from venerable genres like the screwball comedy or the hard-boiled novel (particularly The Thin Man) and translated them to television’s changing structures and aesthetics, participating in what has been termed the second Golden Age of television. However, the Nick and Norah Charles of Moonlighting, David and Maddie, were not married: on the contrary, the series was largely fuelled by the tension between the two leads, who were constantly sparring but were seemingly drawn to one another. Though this romantic tension has long been a staple of the silver screen, translating it into weekly episode…

Mind the Gap: The Big House in Cinematic Representations of the Anglo-Irish War

It goes without saying that the Big House was intended to be a symbol: as more than one critic has remarked, these houses really were only “big” in comparison to the poverty of the lesser structures that surrounded them. They were to be a bastion for British and Anglo-Irish culture and a center for social and administrative interactions. In this sense, they straddled the gap between the towns of Dublin and London, whence their power came, and the villages to whom they administered: it is no coincidence that these garrisons of British power bore the brunt of Republican anger during the Troubles of 1919-1921. Examining two of the rare films to focus on the War of Independence from the perspec…