PhD Theses on Hal Hartley, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and Spanish cinema studies

Javier Bardem as Raúl and Penélope Cruz as Silvia in Jamón Jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992) as discussed in Rebecca Naughten's work Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007

Film Studies For Free was delighted when Spanish cinema scholar Rebecca Naughten responded to its request for information about online PhD theses. Not only did Rebecca let FSFF know that her own really excellent thesis has recently been made available online, but she also did the hard work of trawling through the online repository at the University of Newcastle, where her work is stored, to find four other very good theses archived there. ¡Muchísimas gracias, Rebecca!

These works have just been added to FSFF's permanent list of Online Film and Moving Image Studies PhD Theses (see the link in the table of contents in the right-hand sidebar for future reference) which now makes more than 130 theses accessible to you at the click of your mouse.

Do please let FSFF know if your online PhD thesis, or others you know of, is not yet in this list.

• Deer, Lesley, The repetition of difference: Marginality and the films of Hal Hartley, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2000
• Durham, Christopher Louis, Masculinity in the post-war western: John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2005
• Hamilton, Jayne, Gender representation and textual strategies in the films of Pilar Miró, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 1997
• Mendez-Fiddian, Maria del Carmen, The representation of the family in Spanish cinema from 1950 to the present day, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 1989
• Naughten, Rebecca Claire, Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2010

A Fistful of "Spaghetti Western" Studies

BFI Researcher's Tales: Sir Christopher Frayling on Spaghetti Westerns 
(Frayling is author of Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans From Karl May to Sergio Leone [London: I.B.Tauris, 1981, 1998]; Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death [London: Faber and Faber, 2000]; and
Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy [London: Thames and Hudson, 2005]).

It was the spaghetti Westerns… that first eliminated the morality-play dimension and turned the Western into pure violent reverie [...] What made these [...] popular was that they stripped the Western form of its cultural burden of morality. They discarded its civility along with its hypocrisy. In a sense, they liberated the form: what the Western hero stood for was left out, and what he embodied (strength and gun power) was retained. Abroad, that was probably what he had represented all along.

Pauline Kael, Killing Time, in Karl French (ed.), Screen Violence (London: Bloomsbury, 1974), pp. 171-178: 172.

Today, to accompany its list of links to openly accessible scholarly studies of the Spaghetti (or Italian, or Euro) Western, and related topics, the normally garrulous Film Studies For Free was going to treat its readers to an improbable, digital impersonation of  Clint Eastwood's performance as the Man With No Name in what is often called "The Dollars Trilogy" directed by Sergio Leone.

Sadly, no dice: while it looks good in a poncho, not only does FSFF fall short in performing moral ambiguity, but it's also fairly hopeless when it comes to capturing taciturnity. 

Dammit. 

Do please enjoy the links, anyway. Grazie.

• Spaghetti Western Database

• Jenna Bond, 'Homosexuality and the Italian Spaghetti Western', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 11, November 2007

• Mark Brownrigg, 'Chapter 4: Music and the Western', Film Music and Film Genre, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 2003

• Timothy Campbell, 'The Corrupting Sea, Technology and Devalued Life in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns', California Italian Studies Journal 1.1, 2010

• Rolando Caputo, 'Aldrich, Leone and Vera Cruz: style and substance over the border', Screening the Past, June 30, 2000

• Paul Coughlin, '[Review of] Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone: something to do with death. London: Faber and Faber., 2000', Screening the Past, November 1, 2000

• Vera Dika, 'An East German Indianerfilm: the bear in sheep's clothing', Jump Cut, No. 50, Spring 2008

• Chris Durham, 'Absent Heroism: Reconsidering Clint Eastwood's Star Persona', Scope, Issue 7, 2007

• Robert J. Edmonstone, 'Beyond “Brutality”: Understanding the Italian Filone’s Violent Excesses', PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008

• Daniel Edwards, 'Sergio Leone', Senses of Cinema, 2002

• Austin Fisher, 'A Marxist's Gotta Do What a Marxist's Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier', Scope,  Issue 15, November 2009

• Brad D. Foster, 'Constructing Heroic Identities: Masculinity and the Western Film', Masters Thesis, Oregon State University, July 2007

• Luis M. García Mainar, 'Authorship and Identity in the Cinema of Clint Eastwood', ATLANTIS 29.2 (December 2007)

• Howard Hughes, Excerpts from Aim from the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood (London: IB Tauris, 2009)

• Emily Anne Kausalik, A Fistful of Drama: Musical Form in the Dollars Trilogy, Masters Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2008

• Kyle Keough, 'Cowboys and Shoguns: The American Western, Japanese Jidaigeki, and Cross-Cultural Exchange', DigitalCommons@University of Rhode Island, 2008

• Evert Jan van Leeuven, 'Gothic Eurowesterns: A Grotesque Perspective on a Hollywood Myth',  BRight Lights Film Journal, Issue 60, May 2008

• Scott MacKenzie, 'Closing arias: Operatic montage in the closing sequences of the trilogies of Coppola and Leone', P.O.V. 'The Art of Film Editing', edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998 - (scroll down in large PDF)

• John Nudge, 'Wild East Productions: Spaghetti Westerns', first published in Imagesjournal.com, 1998

• Walter Przybylowski, 'The European Western', Dialogues, Vol. 5, Fall 2006

• Richard Raskin, 'Jack Elam and the Fly in Once Upon a Time in the West', P.O.V. No.24 - The Western, December 2007

• Alireza Vahdani, 'European Western vs. American Western', Offscreen Journal,  January 31, 2010

• Jeannette Vaught, 'Deserting the Desert, Salvaging the Southland: The Re-Location of the American Hero and Cultural Identity in 1970s Outlaw Movies', TPP VII (2009): 9-28

• Tony Williams, 'A Fistful of Dollars', Senses of Cinema , Issue 28, 2003

Fruity film and television studies links!

Due to a devastating case of total PC meltdown (following painful months of on-and-off digital trouble and strife), Film Studies For Free brought you nothing new for over a week...

But now it's back.  Its mission is possible once again. And this time it's brought to you by a new, more reliable, and thoroughly inspirational computer host (think Scottish fruit). 

FSFF never wants to go away again (until vacation time at least). But it may struggle for a wee while, while its owner learns the cool new language of her wonderful new i-World.

Anyhoo, here are some choice links to celebrate its stylish return:

• One of FSFF's favourite film blogs -- Videoarcadia -- is back after a hiatus. Lots of things to read, but FSFF really liked the little post on Gus Van Sant's Milk.
• The new online issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is now available with Martin Roberts on Euro-American subcultural fascination with Japan; Michael Z. Newman on the ethical issues around P2P filesharing; Ben Aslinger on 'popular music and urban place'; Serra Tinic on the US Life on Mars and the cultural politics of imports and adaptations; Jeffrey Sconce on nineties comedy; Carly A. Kocurek on youth, video gaming and the law; Daren C. Brabham on 'Crowdsourced advertising'; and Priscilla Peña Ovalle on racialised bodies in Mexican Breakfast.
• A brilliant stream of posts over at Film For The Soul, thanks to its (now, spinoff) project 'Counting Down the Zeroes: The Noughties in all their glory'. There are twelve great guest posts on noughties films, so far (on Requiem for a Dream, X-Men, Pollock, You Can Count on Me, Traffic, Yi Yi/ A One and a Two, Werckmeister Harmonies,  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, InuYasha, High Fidelity, Boiler Room, and Battle Royale). If you'd like to contribute your own essay on a noughties film, please contact Ibetolis of Film for the Soul asap.
• If your bag is very heavyweight but brilliant philosophy with your film and literary studies (think Wittgenstein, Blanchot, Lacan, T.S.Eliot, plus David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci...), do venture a visit to the remarkable blogspot of Michael Grant, one of FSFF's owner's friends and former colleagues. For the as yet uninitiated, two good posts to try out first are: 'David Cronenberg: Style and Extremity' and  'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead'. 
• Other great blog posts from AP at the Movies ('Barbara Stanwyck, Cowboy Queen' and 'Waiting on a train [on The Train Robbers, 1972]''); Cinebeats (on Yusako Matsuda); Spectacular Attractions (on M. Night Shyamalan's underrated film Unbreakable); the peerless Tativille on Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees; and lots of wonderful recent posts at Shooting Down Pictures (FSFF loved the one on the 'best documentary of the decade').