This thesis analyses individual 3D texts to explore how stereography inflects the representational strategies synonymous with the various modes of cinema to which it suggests that those films are indebted. It argues that the stereoscopic spectacles of emergence and deep stereospace can be integrated into a narrative. The thesis represents an original contribution to knowledge in demonstrating that stereography can be understood as another element of mise-en-scène contributing to meaning construction in those specific films studied. The literature review considers film theory’s understanding of how the spectator’s ‘participation’ has been inflected by previous technological alterations to the cinematic image’s width and depth and the extent to which 3D has been read as an expressive element. Four case studies, each of a different contemporary stereoscopic film belonging to a different cinematic tradition, then demonstrate how that tradition is stereographically re-inflected towards expressive ends. Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) demonstrates that 3D works alongside the continuity style of the contemporary spectacular blockbuster, renegotiating its relationship to the spectator, encouraging engagement with narrative themes. Jackass 3D’s (Jeff Tremaine, 2010) stereography accentuates the ‘vaudeville aesthetic’ discernible in slapstick comedy and emphasises an exploitation of the frame similar to that found in the cinema of Buster Keaton. It argues that 3D enables an inclusion of the spectator within a carnivalesque narrative of camaraderie. Step Up 3D (Jon M. Chu) demonstrates how 3D reinforces the utopian participation of the audience typical of the Hollywood musical, to which it is indebted. The Hole in 3D (Joe Dante, 2009), re-inflects representational strategies synonymous with horror cinema to articulate a narrative about violence whose meaning construction is dependent upon a stereographically-embodied spectator. This thesis, then, argues for a more sensitive understanding of 3D’s expressive potential than has largely been the case by demonstrating how that understanding might be reached.

My doctoral thesis conducts an analysis of post-imperial Paris and London, as represented in the cinema. More specifically, this study develops a narrative of the intimate connection between the cinema and the city that parts ways from the founding story of the filmic city, which revolves around the birth of the modern metropolis and mobilities of the flâneur. This thesis engages in the exploration of the largely untold story of the relationship between empire and the cinematic city in Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu (2000) and Caché (2005), Claire Denis’ J’ai pas sommeil (1994) Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Michael Winterbottom’s In This World (2002) and Tony Gatlif’s Exils (2004). This study investigates the lingering traces of imperial histories, spatialities, narratives and figures that can be located in more contemporary cinema. The first chapter of the dissertation entitled ‘Post-Imperial Paris’ is divided into two sections. The first investigates the construction of ‘post-imperial topographies’ in J’ai pas sommeil and Code inconnu, while the second posits dwelling spaces and their interiors as a form of city space specifically in relation to Caché. The second chapter, called ‘Post-Imperial London’, situates Dirty Pretty Things within a wider historical continuum of ‘migrant London’. This film is examined in relation to filmic depictions of Caribbean migration and settlement, in order to ascertain the way in which an older historical imaginary of the cinematic London can be detected in Dirty Pretty Things but also some of the salient differences between this film and its predecessors as related to the representation of space and place. The final chapter, titled ‘On the Road: The Journey to the City Narrative’ posits another narrative of the cinematic city concerning the depiction of migrant journeys to the city as represented in In This World and Exils.

Whilst the prominence of the sequel in contemporary American cinema is inarguable, little attempt has been made to identify its formal characteristics or to provide a comprehensive account of its historical development over the past century. Offering a corrective to this oversight, this thesis addresses three key research questions: what are the formal characteristics of the sequel in all its variations in American cinema?; to what extent have these formal characteristics changed over time?; and how are these changes related to the shifts in the economic and industrial structures of the American film industry? Drawing on a wide range of sources, the first four chapters trace the historical development of the sequel, from silent era features such as The Son of Sheik (1926) through to contemporary franchises. Building upon this historical context, the second half of the thesis is dedicated to an examination of the Hollywood sequel’s formal characteristics. Initially concerned with the manner in which the sequel form differs from and challenges the notions of closure which inform the Classical Hollywood paradigm, these chapters progress to a consideration of the dynamic between genre, stars, character and narrative as it plays out in sequels ranging from Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) to Rooster Cogburn (1975) and Rambo (2008). In placing equal emphasis on history and aesthetics, the thesis ultimately aims to both develop a typology of the sequel form, and to build a more complete picture of the many ways in which Hollywood has sought to repeat its previous successes, the historically specific conditions which have governed these repetitions, and the compositional norms which have resulted.

This thesis concerns a very common, yet surprisingly under-examined, concept: the Hollywood ‘happy ending’. Focusing on an aspect of this convention that I call the ‘final couple’ (i.e.: an ultimate romantic union), the study examines movies from throughout the history of popular American cinema in order to interrogate common critical assumptions about ‘happy endings’. Chapter 1 questions the existence of the homogenous norm the ‘happy ending’ by attempting to define it – a task more challenging than the convention’s reputation would have us believe. Chapter 2 looks at the relationship between ‘happy endings’ and closure, arguing that, while some films succeed in making their final couples feel emphatically ‘closed’, others use different strategies to render the same convention comparatively ‘open’. Chapter 3 examines the connection between ‘happy endings’ and ‘unrealism’, considering firstly the traditionally close conceptual relationship between the ‘happy ending’ and fiction tout court, before, secondly, exploring the ways in which the final couple relates to debates concerning the ‘openness’ of life and the ‘closed’ nature of narrative. Chapter 4 addresses the ideology of ‘happy endings’ by discussing (1) what potential the concept of the final couple might be said to have for structuring viewers’ real-life romantic relationships, (2) the ideological implications of closure, and (3) the different ideological meanings that a final couple can convey in what is often taken to be an innately ‘conservative’ genre, the romantic comedy. The results of my analyses suggest that ‘happy endings’ are as conducive to variation as any other artistic convention – a fact that has significant ramifications for our thinking about Hollywood conclusions.

Comic mockumentaries have been a regular fixture on cinema and television screens since the early 1960s, and texts such as A Hard Day’s Night, This is Spinal Tap, The Thick of It and the work of Christopher Guest have all achieved mainstream popular success. However, current scholarship has side-lined virtually all discussion of these comic texts, which are both the most popular and the most common examples of the fake documentary form, in favour of those instances which exhibit an intense reflexive relationship with the straight documentary. This thesis proposes a critical and aesthetic re-evaluation of the comic mockumentary form, by using detailed textual analysis of a range of radio, television and film texts, to explore how they function critically and historically, and how the comedy within them works. I also argue for the consideration of the mockumentary as a genre rather than simply an aesthetic mode. My main contention is that the primary aspiration of the comic mockumentary is entertainment, rather than the construction of a reflexive critique of the straight documentary form. As a result, the mockumentary has begun to sever its direct links to documentary, and it is no longer useful to examine these texts solely in terms dictated by their relationship with documentary proper. By emphasising the role that comedy and tone play within the genre, I hope to open the form up to a wider range of critical approaches than current discussions have so far allowed. The thesis also highlights the centrality of performance, suggesting that the performative aspects of genuine musicians such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and the public personae of politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, are the focus of the mockumentary text. Examples such as This is Spinal Tap and The Thick of It can be seen to create an ironic critical distance, complicating the way that we understand the straight documentary through the comedic interplay of the real and the fictional.

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This thesis analyses multi-episode British drama programmes in the spy and conspiracy genres over a period from 1979 to 2010, investigating televisual issues of form and genre and interrogating a model of how television is considered to 'work through' the concerns and anxieties of the nation. Chapter One provides a literature review of the conventions of the spy and conspiracy genres. Chapter Two looks at a cycle of ‘prestige’ adaptations of spy novels beginning with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (BBC2, 1979), considering the new developments they brought to form and genre, particularly in terms of complex serial narratives. Chapter Three analyses a cycle of 'authored' conspiracy serials emerging from traditions of 'radical' television drama across the 1980s, including Edge of Darkness (BBC2, 1985) and A Very British Coup (Channel 4, 1988). Positioning them in relation to the oppositional anxieties of the era, I argue that there emerges a greater tendency for such programming to engage with topical 'headline' issues, thereby playing a greater role in television's 'working through' than the more traditional spy series. Chapter Four takes a more longitudinal approach and examines how the spy series evolved over these decades, from The Professionals (ITV, 1977-83) to Spooks (BBC1, 2002-11), finding that these also display a greater tendency towards topical concerns but that the manner in which this is accomplished is substantially affected by the series form. Finally, Chapter Five analyses a revival of the conspiracy genre in the context of the 'war on terror', considering how programmes such as The State Within (BBC1, 2006) approach the same issues as Spooks but from an alternative perspective. Across the thesis, I explore how over time the formal and generic innovations introduced at the beginning of the period of study are absorbed into and managed by existing traditions and a growing generic self-consciousness, which comes to partially blunt the process of 'working through'.

This thesis explores some of the possibilities of the relationship established between a movie, its main character(s) and the viewer in terms of distance. I treat distance primarily as an aspect of point of view, and it is in relation to the body of literature in film studies pertaining to point of view that this account positions itself in its first chapter. I offer there a series of arguments that reject i) the need to postulate a cinematic narrator for all or even most movies, ii) the over-privileging of the camera in theorizations of point of view, and iii) accounts of point of view built too centrally around characters, with a too-narrow emphasis upon either optical POV shots or characters-as-narrators. I present a more holistic approach to point of view and distance. My three case study chapters are structured according to Robin Wood’s suggestion that the films of Max Ophuls achieve a balance between ‘the audience-participation techniques of Hitchcock and the clinical objectivity and detachment of Preminger’ (Personal Views 126). Each chapter chiefly offers a critical account of point of view and distance in a single movie. First, I discuss Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958): I describe the techniques it employs to encourage the viewer to share its protagonist’s emotional experiences. Next, I discuss Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959): how the movie achieves emotional detachment in its viewer, and to what end. Finally, I discuss The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls, 1949), and demonstrate how the movie, whilst rarely leaving its protagonist’s side and maintaining a sympathetic view of her, is committed to revealing the limitations of her perspective on events. My first chapter constitutes a contribution to various longstanding debates within the study of filmic point of view. I view this thesis mainly as a work of film criticism, and therefore as a contribution to our understanding of the directors and films studied within it – and of Hollywood cinema more broadly. I also view this account as a demonstration of one methodological approach we might usefully adopt in the study of film and point of view – a comparative approach rooted in detailed textual analysis.

During its first decade, Game Studies debate mainly revolved around the juxtaposition between two perspectives: the one of ludology and the one of narratology, each positing a primary quality of video games against the other. The study of the relationship between cinema and video games got somehow caught in the crossfire between these two fields. In this work, I investigate the extent to which representation in video games is connected to cinema and its representational codes. A number of authors before challenged this assumption, theorising models that only partially connect the cinematic form to video games. Such investigations have always started from the ludologically educated assumption that video games are different from cinema and, therefore, for the premises of this comparison to be considered “vitiated”, only tangentially useful due to the irreconcilably different nature of the two media. The adjective “cinematic” is a concept constantly evoked in cultural discourses concerning video games. Magazines, reviewers, critics, but also designers, artists, users and commentators (even scholars) often summon the idea of cinematic games in the attempt of describing some peculiar features that share affinities with films and suggesting that video games possess the aura of the big screen. Cinematic games are born at the crossroads between interactive movies and video games, for which the cinematic expression is retained by means of audiovisual representation while keeping the action in the hands of the player. Due to the vast scale of the subject, my work focuses on relatively recent developments in game design which have yet to be fully investigated, and seeks to extend existing attempts to apply the tools of film theory to Game Studies. A secondary value of this work is an annotation on the disengagement of moving image scholars with video games, and it partly serves as an invocation for this to change.

Cette thèse examine le statut de la parole vivante dans les pratiques artistiques vidéo. À partir des années 1970, des artistes s’approprient le support vidéographique, se tournent vers ceux qui les entourent, ou parcourent le monde à la rencontre d’autrui, orientant leur caméra vers des visages, à l’écoute d’une parole. Ces vidéos relèvent d'esthétiques diverses mais un certain nombre de caractéristiques se dessinent au fil de l’étude, tissant des liens entre des projets d’apparence très différents. Il s'agit donc de dégager les enjeux qu'elles partagent et d'évaluer la contribution des plasticiens au renouvellement des représentations de parole. Le rapport que ces oeuvres établissent avec les structures narratives classiques du parler sur soi est d'abord envisagé à travers l’analyse des récits contenus dans les vidéos, et des stratégies adoptées par les artistes afin de questionner la construction narrative dans ses mécanismes structurels et formels. Puis, à partir d’un large corpus d’oeuvres, sont examinées les spécificités des protocoles d’enquête et d’entretien qui deviennent les conditions de la pratique artistique. Ces vidéos se caractérisent par une forme de représentation singulière qui révèle un réinvestissement du genre multiséculaire du portrait : un portrait parlant. L’étude d’installations vidéo contemporaines permet enfin d’examiner les rapports qu'entretiennent parole filmée et espace d’exposition / espace de réception d’une parole. Les inserts disséminés dans les pages du volume exposent la pratique artistique et les développements qui ont accompagné ce travail de recherche, instaurant un dialogue permanent entre théorie et pratique / This PhD thesis examines the status of the living word in the video art practices. From the 1970s, the artists use the videographic media, look to those around them, or travel the world meeting others, focusing their camera on faces, listening to a speech. These videos take on such different pertain to various aesthetics but a number of characteristics emerge throughout the study weaving links between projects that seem at first glance quite different. It is thus a question of identifying their common stakes, and evaluating the contribution of the artistes to the renewal of representations of speech. First, the relationship that these works establish with conventional narrative structures of talk about self is considered through the analysis of narratives contained in the videos, and strategies adopted by artists to question the narrative construction in its structural and formal mechanisms. Then, based on a large corpus of pieces, is examined the specificities of investigation and interview protocols that become conditions of artistic practice. These videos are characterized by a form of representation that reveals a singular reinvestment of centuries of portraiture: a speaking portrait. Finally, the study of contemporary video installations allows to examine the relationships between speech, filmed and exhibition space / reception space of a word. The inserts scattered in the pages of the volume expose the artistic practice and the developments that have accompanied this research, in a continuous dialogue between theory and practice