This thesis examines the representation of the American president in fictional films and television programmes, as well as documentary film and photography. It engages broadly with the subject’s entire history, but focuses particularly on the past two decades (1992-2012). Its primary method is close textual analysis, departing from pre-existing studies that are largely preoccupied with questions of verisimilitude and historical accuracy. The construction of the cinematic and televisual presidencies requires a simultaneous negotiation of the ‘real’ political/historical record, and the desire to reproduce and reinforce the representational genealogies inherited from cinema and television’s own histories (not necessarily all explicitly ‘political’). My research has found the presidency to be overwhelmingly reliant upon mythological discourses about American national identity, and traditional conceptions of masculinity. How these constructions impact upon the representation of the president in relation to the contexts from which the films and programmes emerge is of crucial importance. The conception of the presidency has undergone enormous change since the early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, the increased scrutiny of the mass media, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, and the economic crisis, have either challenged or reinforced the notion that the president is an omnipotent force, able to bend the world to his will. The strategies cinema and television have employed to address these changes is of crucial significance to this thesis. This thesis will establish the manner in which techniques of mainstream film and television production – genre, visual style, iconography, and narrative – have impacted upon the reinforcement or critique of the presidential myth. As the presidency has suffered relative decline in a more diffuse geopolitical environment, this thesis demonstrates the extent to which the myth of the presidency has required the intervention of mainstream cinema and television to ensure its preservation.

This thesis defines the term exploitation as it relates to the style of a number of key American film titles that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, concurrent with the fall of cinema censorship. These productions presented spectacles of convincing corporeality and the adaptation of film techniques which may be labelled ‘realist'. The key films of this thesis will be argued to comprise a cinematic movement that can be labelled exploitation. The first part of this thesis will outline the time period of this study and the methodology used; based upon the historical and comparative writing on the classic Hollywood era of cinema initiated by David Bordwell. Drawing upon Bordwell and other scholars who have engaged with what the Academy recognises as the ‘new film history' (such as Eric Schaefer and his discussion of the classic exploitation film), I will introduce the work of André Bazin and argue that his writing on cinema realism can be attributed and understood as a style of filmmaking. This style is appropriated by exploitation insofar as similar, minimalist representations of modernity were brought to American cinema, albeit presented in generic narratives. The second part of this thesis will look at each of the key exploitation genres in detail: blaxploitation, exploitation-horror and sexploitation. I will engage with previous writing on what may be deemed ‘marginal' cinema and argue that each of the genres discussed in this thesis contain films that approach taboo subject matter with an oppositional approach to their Hollywood ‘other'. This point is especially relevant insofar as exploitation reveals images of physical horror and sexuality that the mainstream hides. In conclusion, this thesis hopes to bring a more contained and studied look at ‘marginal' cinema to the Academy and to give a definition of exploitation that will influence and inspire future studies of the form.

This thesis analyses Chilean documentary films and videos of the post-dictatorial era from the restoration of democracy in 1990 until 2011, focusing on the audiovisual treatment of contested memories of the dictatorship and its legacies. The main argument is that documentary performs a trajectory of a revelation of bodies, oscillating between – at times intersecting with – the bodies of 'direct victims' and the film's body itself. Such an itinerary is deeply intertwined with Chile's own democratic transition. The study aims to transcend Chilean documentary's self-evident testimonial value and restrictive readings of the films as works about trauma, as these eclectic artistic reactions to the military coup present a broad range of affective responses. It establishes connections and disjunctions between different generations of documentarians and heightens the visibility of a number of under-researched productions. To unpack these heterogeneous documentary responses and their aesthetic features, close textual analysis of selected sequences from an extensive corpus is performed. This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach informed by the 'haptic turn' in film studies, trauma and memory studies, cultural studies, history and gender. After examining the strategies deployed to reveal the past and its atrocious images, the study reassesses the cinematic homecomings of exilic directors as key precedents of the current rise of first person documentary. The ensuing evaluation of younger directors' productions indicates that whereas childhood memories are mobilised to explore the (im)possibilities of recalling a past only tangentially experienced, a nostalgic approach to the 1980s seeks to claim an active role in the redemocratisation process. Two recent cases featuring rather disturbing voices (of a former agent of repression and of Pinochet’s supporters) shed further light on the transformations experienced both by non-fiction and Chile itself. This thesis thus illustrates a documentary shift from articulating a 'cinema of the affected' to a 'cinema of affect'.

Peter Lorre often described his acting as merely "face-making". This disparaging attitude is reflected within critiques which read the life of Peter Lorre as a tragic narrative of wasted opportunities and his career as a screen performer as restricted by the nature of his employment in studio-era Hollywood. Working in the United States, he was unable to escape from the notoriety of his first major role in the German film, M (1931), or from the murderous persona that evolved from his portrayal of a psychopathic serial killer. His status as an emigre positioned him as a European "artist" whose talent was misused by American filmmaking practices which typecast the actor in line with his nefarious public image. This thesis proposes to investigate the accuracy of these perceptions which approach the actor via a binary split between "person" and "persona". It will offer an alternative methodology for analysing the career of the screen actor which recognises that persona-based analyses can obscure complex negotiations between performance, image and the conditions of employment. Rather than attempting to reveal the "real" Peter Lorre behind the image, the context of Lorre's mutable position as an employee within the Hollywood industry and the misconstrued association between his screen labour and his public persona will be examined. The creative agency of the actor will also be examined in order to question Lorre's definition of himself as "face-maker" whose work was reliant upon performative gimmicks. This alternative approach to the screen actor will be pursued through a chronological investigation of Lorre's professional labour. Also necessary are an exploration of the features of Lorre's persona and an understanding of the role played by other media in the construction of this public image. My methodology will combine close textual analysis of Lorre's screen performances, archival research into the terms of his employment and extensive analysis of promotional discourses pertaining to the actor throughout his career. My historiography of Lorre will consider the relationship between the actor and a number of his employers to suggest that conditions of employment help to shape screen performance. Lorre's status as a "face-maker" will also be challenged through a demonstration of the actor's use of complex performative techniques within his film work. This thesis will demonstrate the limitations of interpreting Lorre's career as Hollywood's mismanagement of a problematic performer. Instead, his career can be considered indicative of industrial strategies that exist between acting labour, promotional personas and employers. One consequence of my research is the reevaluation of Lorre's persona as "extra-filmic" and his career as "transmedial". As such, this thesis highlights how the significant labour of a screen performer can potentially become superseded by the personas used by employers to promote actors away from the cinema screen.

This thesis uses the concept of melancholy to extend and develop the critical understanding of the Western genre. It focuses on the various ways in which Westerns made in Hollywood between 1939 and 1962 can be said to express melancholy. It proposes that, during the period in which Western movies were an important and popular part of mainstream film production, the conventions of the genre were familiar and well-developed enough to permit a wide range of sophisticated expressive possibilities. The complex and ambiguous associations attached to the notion of melancholy make it particularly suitable for demonstrating this. The Review of Literature addresses the major perspectives through which Westerns have been conceived and understood within Film Studies, and assesses their relevance to the methodology employed in this thesis. It also considers some of the wider contexts that will be employed in the discussion of the genre and its conventions that will follow. The Introduction to Melancholy establishes a fuller cultural, historical and intellectual context for the particular focus of the thesis, and suggests some of its specific applications in relation to Westerns. The main section of the thesis is divided into four chapters. Each of these examines a particular feature of the Western genre that can be used to express melancholy. Chapter 1 discusses the conventions that are employed to frame our understanding of violence in the genre. The melancholy implications of these conventions, and the problems that arise out of them, are considered in relation to a number of films from the period. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with more specific and localised tropes which function as melancholy reflections of other aspects of the genre. Chapter 2 looks at the night-time town as an alternative melancholy space within the generic world of the West. Aspects of the previous chapter’s discussion of violence are developed in this context, through the detailed analysis of the use of the night-time town in Pursued, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Stagecoach. Chapter 3 examines the figure of the old man as a melancholy counterpart to the Western hero. It demonstrates a long-standing connection between the two character types within the genre, and investigates how this connection is used to portray the hero in a melancholy light. The first half of the chapter examines the melancholy relationship between the hero and old men as supporting characters in Blood on the Moon and Yellow Sky. The second half develops some of the same issues further in relation to old men in more prominent roles in Man of the West and Ride the High Country. Chapter 4 considers the use of music to express melancholy in Westerns. Its particular focus is the Western title song, and the period of the early 1950s when it came to prominence. More broadly, the chapter looks at the effects of combining styles and conventions from Western movies and popular music, and the ways in which this combination can produce melancholy. The films whose title songs are examined in detail are High Noon, Rancho Notorious, Johnny Guitar and River of No Return.

This thesis aims to re-examine the industrial and cultural landscape of Scottish cinema since the advent of public funding institutions for the support of indigenous filmmaking. This period in Scottish cinema has been described by historians as one in which subsidy bodies have created the conditions necessary for the unprecedented flourishing of internationally high-profile national cinema production throughout the last twenty-five years. By taking a 'bottom up' approach to the period and closely analysing six films in relation to their production and reception contexts, the thesis seeks to break from the survey formats which have dominated Scottish cinema historiography and to more thoroughly explore the relationships that have existed between key films from this period, the funding bodies that have supported them and the audiences that have consumed them. In so doing it attempts at various points to supplement, qualify and critique a number of assumptions and arguments that have dominated the field of Scottish cinema studies, all while providing detailed critical and historical treatments of a number of important and sometimes overlooked films from the period.

This thesis proposes that the temporality of the moving image is not just its basic condition, but also an alterable stylistic parameter. By analysing three broad stylistic categories of cinema - Classical Continuity-editing, Montage, and Long Take - it is demonstrated that the time of a sequence or shot operates as an active element within the formal fabric of the work. Beyond this, it shows that these film styles may in fact be defined by the characteristic ways in which they treat time. Methodologically, it adapts concepts from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson and Hans Georg Gadamer, fusing them with close textual analysis to allow the theory to grow around the practical instance of its object. One of the primary goals is to establish a critical idiom capable of dealing appropriately and sympathetically with this neglected aspect of film aesthetics, to uncover a suitable vocabulary for talking about the expressive use of time in cinema. This study contributes to the existing body of research on cinematic time (which is primarily concerned with ontology and ideology) by addressing the distinct lack of critical and theoretical work that engages with the temporality of cinema at the microscopic level of the moment to moment passage of a scene, that is, the temporal stylistics of cinema.

This thesis deals with the issue of the everyday represented in the films of Japanese film director Ozu Yasujiro (1903-1963) from a socio-historical perspective. Recognised as one of the masters of Japanese cinema, Ozu is well-known for his depiction of the everyday life of Japanese people consistently throughout his long career. Ozu’s cinema, however, has been mainly studied from a formal point of view that pays attention to his particular cinematic styles. This thesis aims to revise this tendency by adopting the socio-historical methodology that actively draws upon the knowledge of modern Japanese history, and combining it with the analyses of Ozu’s films. Following a chronological order of the prewar, war and the postwar in Japanese history as well as in Ozu’s career, this thesis is structured to investigate two main issues – the modern and the postwar – at both textual and contextual levels. My discussion thus includes historical backgrounds of how these two issues defined Japanese society, their influences on Japanese film industry (especially with regard to Shochiku, where Ozu worked), and their interaction with Ozu’s films as appearing in the form of everyday lives of different kinds of subjects. The result suggests a much more multifaceted shape of Ozu’s oeuvre. Each of the different subjects I analyse exhibits contrasting aspects of the everyday in terms of both spatiality and temporality, which are closely related to the changing history of modern Japan. I also argue that Ozu consistently provided his representation of the everyday a critical dimension of Japanese modernity, which I conceptualise with the notion of ‘deviation’. This thesis thus concludes that Ozu, as a filmmaker of everyday life, was always conscious of his contemporary society, and in this sense, the everyday in his films is more dynamic than empty.

This thesis examines Hollywood narratives of married life produced between 1934 and 1948. Using Stanley Cavell’s seminal Pursuits of Happiness as a point of departure, I compare the depiction of benign domesticity across four chapters. Combining textual analysis, genre criticism and studio archival research, I re-evaluate Cavell’s notion of ‘films in conversation’, and suggest that narratives of marriage call for an approach that considers intertextuality, audience address and the interaction of star personae. My first two chapters focus on MGM’s six Thin Man films, discussing an ongoing series’ portrayal of a continuous marriage. In my analysis of The Thin Man, After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man, I argue that the mystery plots of these films inform and inflect the depiction of marriage in private and public space. In contrast to previous studies that view Shadow of the Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home and Song of the Thin Man as signaling the onset of domesticity and the format’s decline, I view these films as proposing alternative ways of attending to the problem of the male child. The third chapter compares Penny Serenade and Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House, films in which the happiness of a family is made contingent upon the construction of a home. In this chapter, I suggest that building a home for one’s daughters permits the films’ mise-en-scene to be invested with possibility of renewal. My fourth chapter discusses three films in which a partner returns to marriage after a period of absence – My Favourite Wife, The Best Years of Our Lives and Tomorrow is Forever. With particular attention to the role of ‘the other woman’, I note ways in which these narratives propose the future of their couples.

This thesis investigates the way in which film as a specific medium is capable of communicating a subjectivity that is troubled or otherwise compromised by mental illness. It is traditionally held that the written word is a far more suitable medium for communicating interiority than the medium of film, as the word is characterised as complex, abstract and conceptual, whilst the image is characterised as straightforward, obvious and concrete. This thesis will argue, however, that the medium of film is entirely capable of dealing with the abstract and conceptual, and can in fact construct extremely complex frameworks of subjectivity due to its multitrack character. Using detailed textual analysis, I will interrogate the way in which film utilises the multiple channels available to it (the visual, verbal, and aural) to create complex systems of meaning. Due to the tendency of filmmakers to appeal to literary sources for guidance when conveying mental states, the issue of adaptation is crucial to my entry into this discussion. My corpus primarily consists of films that are based on literary accounts of troubled subjectivity (either biographical or fictional). My thesis will compare and contrast filmic and literary conveyances of mental illness to establish the symbols, metaphors and analogies that communicate complex interiority. My key case studies are: A Scanner Darkly (dir. Richard Linklater, 2006), Clean, Shaven (dir. Lodge Kerrigan, 1993), A Beautiful Mind (dir. Ron Howard, 2001), Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999), Secret Window (dir. David Koepp, 2004), The Hours (dir. Stephen Daldry, 2002), and A Single Man (dir. Tom Ford, 2008). This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by generating alternative readings of these films that take into account the multitrack character of the medium. These readings will highlight the specific techniques and vocabularies that are drawn on and developed to communicate disordered interiority.