By bringing M. Antonioni and A. Egoyan into dialogue with one another, this thesis sheds light on a significant yet neglected aspect of their cinematic visions: the interactions of practices of technological mediation with phenomena of contamination and dissolution of boundaries. My work is inspired by the recovery of archival material that demonstrates the two auteurs’ intention to collaborate on a filmmaking project, entitled Just to Be Together, between 1997 and 1998. This unfinished film invites us to look retrospectively at Antonioni’s and Egoyan’s oeuvres in a way that transcends established frameworks of analysis based on national, art-house, and diasporic/exilic paradigms. Focusing on what came before this suspended artistic collaboration, the present study proceeds through a series of paired readings of films, framed within a theoretical context of transnational cinema. The final section includes an expanded, intertextual discussion of the major findings of my research in relation to the screenplay of Just to Be Together. Whilst recognising the directors’ different cultural and historical backgrounds, I argue that there exist strong thematic and stylistic affinities between Antonioni’s ‘art-house’ cinema and Egoyan’s ‘accented’ aesthetics. The corpus I have chosen to concentrate on reflects my view that such similarities are most noticeable in Antonioni’s first colour films and Egoyan’s early features. In particular, the following films are examined in pairs: Il deserto rosso (1964) / The Adjuster (1991) (Chapter One, ‘Reconfiguring Modernity’); Blow-up (1966) / Speaking Parts (1989) (Chapter Two, ‘Capturing What Vanishes’); The Passenger (1974) / Next of Kin (1984) (Chapter Three, ‘Discarding the Unwanted Skin’). By using different conceptual frameworks developed by scholars such as Zygmunt Bauman, Julia Kristeva, Rosi Braidotti, Roland Barthes, and Richard Dyer, this study explores themes of fluidity, ambivalence, renegotiation of bodily boundaries, media technologies, pollution, and identity. It aims to engage with recent critical efforts to rethink Antonioni’s aesthetics from the perspective of contemporary theoretical frames, whilst opening up a discursive space from which to challenge the validity of diasporic and accented models for Egoyan’s early features.

Taking Soviet films from 1926 to 1945 as its frame of reference, this thesis seeks to answer the question: is autonomous voicing possible in film during a period defined by Stalin’s concentration of power and his authoritarian influence on the arts? Aviation and flight imaging in these films shares characteristics of language, and the examination of the use of aviation and flight as an expressive means reveals nuances in messaging which go beyond the official demand of Soviet Socialist Realism to show life in its revolutionary movement towards socialism. Reviewing the films chronologically, it is shown how they are unified by a metaphor of ‘gaining wings’. In filmic representations of air-shows, Arctic flights, aviation schools, aviation circus-acts, and aircraft invention, the Soviet peoples’ identity in the 1930s became constructed as being metaphorically ‘winged’. This metaphor links to the fundamental Icarian precursor myth and, in turn, speaks to sub-structuring semantic spheres of freedom, transformation, creativity, love and transcendence. Air-parade film communicates symbolically, but refers to real events; like an icon, it visualizes the word of Stalinist-Leninist scriptures. Piloted by heroic ‘falcons’, Soviet destiny was perceived to be a miraculous ‘flight’ which realised the political and technological dreams of centuries. But aviation and cinematographic flights communicate multi-valently, beyond that of the ideological dominant. Film based on the myth of the ‘Russian Icarus’ points to the possibility of the Revolution as an Icarian flight perceived as a fall in Stalin’s time. Cinematographic flights, both actual and metaphorical, can be communicated on levels of psychology, cinema-philosophy and allegory, and ‘gaining wings’ is a universal metaphor for self-expansion in love, creative work and gaining knowledge. The expressive use of flight and aviation may have been directed towards the communication of a ‘bright’ socialist future, but this thesis shows its communication of Soviet identity is more complex.

This thesis explores the relationship between womb phantasies and the proliferation of womb and birth symbolism in international horror and extreme cinema from the mid-twentieth to early twenty-first century. It presents a new cross-national reading of this symbolism as revealing the oppressed and repressed desire to return to the early mother-child dyad, through the use of culturally specific psychoanalytic theory. Chapter 1 outlines the position of the womb phantasy in Freud’s work, providing the critical engagement with this founding theory necessary for the ensuing cross-cultural readings of film and psychoanalytic theory. Subsequent chapters then trace the presence of the womb phantasy in key films from France, America, South Korea and Japan. Chapter 2 establishes the background for the womb phantasy by exploring the representation of the primal phantasies in French cinema, providing a critique of the patriarchal construction of femininity and motherhood using the work of Irigaray, Kristeva and Anzieu. Chapter 3 evaluates the representation of symbiotic motherchild relationships in American horror as symbolic of the womb phantasy, using the work of Mahler, Chodorow and Horney. Chapter 4 questions what happens when this symbiosis is interrupted, with the research of Min, Chung and Cho enabling an analysis of the motifs of abortion, infanticide and death in key films from South Korea. Chapter 5 then shows how the womb is presented as a liminal space between life and death in Japanese cinema with reference to the work of Kitayama, before exploring the correlation between Doi’s theory of amae and the womb phantasy. This thesis thus combines close filmic analysis with psychoanalytic theory to pinpoint the consistencies and variations in the international obsession with the womb in horror and extreme cinema, whilst simultaneously providing the first detailed study of how womb phantasies have become ingrained in psychoanalytic theory across the world.

Recent years have witnessed an influx of superhero films, particularly those based on Marvel comics. From X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) to team-up mega-blockbuster The Avengers (2012) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the stream of Marvel superhero adaptations is ongoing and relentless. These films have received modest academic attention; however, close examination of the specific portrayals of women in superhero films has remained sporadic. This thesis is the first work to cohesively consider representations of women in films based on Marvel comics, from The Punisher (1989) to more recent films such as Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Through textual analysis which accounts for discursive, contextual and ideological issues surrounding these films, I discuss how representations of women in Marvel adaptations are informed by discourses of anxiety and struggle regarding gender issues in wider Western culture. The superhero boom occurred at a time which can be considered “postfeminist,” in which discourses of women’s “empowerment” are actively incorporated into media texts, while specific references to political feminism are shunned. Tracing historical and cultural contexts from the characters’ comic book forms, this thesis provides an exhaustive account of issues of women’s empowerment in Marvel films with particular emphasis on the ways in which postfeminist culture has shaped such portrayals. The films are considered within a wider action genre framework, drawing from existing scholarship in the field of feminist film studies. However, attention is also drawn to the role of sexuality and race within these largely white, heterosexual portrayals of feminine empowerment. Overall I consider the questions: How is power negotiated within female Marvel characters? How does an emphasis on sex appeal relate to feminist and postfeminist culture? How do these representations intersect with greater issues involving sexuality and race? And, importantly, in what ways do these representations tie in to modes of women’s empowerment in the time periods during which these films were released?

The war-comedy films M*A*S*H and Catch 22 are frequently discussed in academia as related to the anti-Vietnam War movement and the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kelly’s Heroes, also a war-comedy film released in 1970, and thematically similar to M*A*S*H and Catch 22, is rarely discussed as such. This research suggests that the relationship these films have with the Vietnam War may be overstated, misrepresented or more complicated than previously thought. In examining this relationship the research presented here explores a methodology which seeks to trace changes within the critical and academic discourses which surround the three films. Rather than assessing and attempting to understand the film texts in isolation, this thesis assesses the (often changing) meanings that have been associated with them since they were released, to provide a more holistic expansive understanding of their perceived position in North American culture. To do this a method was developed that sought to contextualise and analyse the reviews, marketing material and newspaper articles related to the films. This method, which focusses on what was written about the films rather than analysis of the films themselves as a way of exploring how they were being perceived, draws upon the relationships which exist between these texts, placing them in context both with each other and the wider cultural milieu. The research traces changing perceptions of the films’ genres, the relationships between the values associated with them and their positions in the film canon, and the impact of events ancillary to the films on the ways they have been understood. It shows that it is possible to demonstrate how certain ways of understanding the film texts came to dominate the discourse which surrounds them, demonstrating the viability of, and value in, longitudinal tracking of discursive trends.

In the last ten years there has been a significant shift of interest in film music from Film departments to Music departments. This study seeks to balance the situation and bring film music back into the sphere of action of Film Studies. Film scholars can still give an important specialistic contribution by tackling the music as one of the cinematic devices, and focussing on the analysis of its interplay with the other formal elements of film. In this view, the scope of this study is to develop an approach and a set of analytical tools that serve as a guidance to film scholars to address music in film from their discipline-specific perspective. The analytical approach here offered stems from a mix of Neoformalism – from Film Studies – and concepts drawn from Leonard Meyer's music theories. Neoformalism describes and explains the filmic system focussing on the overall form and style, not only on the interpretation of the film's contents and meanings. In particular, the analysis concentrates on the function(s) and motivation(s) of a series of devices, whose interplay is at the basis of the film's formal system. Being one of the film's devices, music carries out specific functions and responds to specific motivations. Yet, film music is also music. Hence, Neoformalism is coupled with Leonard B. Meyer's theories. According to Meyer the meaning and emotional effect of a tonal piece of music derives from the way in which the composition plays with the listener’s expectations and anticipations, which are based on a shared knowledge of norms and conventions. This interest in norms and conventions and in the psychology of perception links Meyer's studies to Neoformalism. And their common interest in the 'whole,' in formal stabilisation, and closure makes Gestalt Psychology a fitting overarching theoretical framework to integrate Neoformalism with Meyer's musicology. The combination of the micro-configuration of the music and that of the visuals produces a macro-configuration in which the whole is something different from the sum of its parts. In this audiovisual interaction, three areas of musical agency are identified in the film: music can have a perceptive function; an emotive function; a cognitive function. The findings are valuable for both the disciplines involved. To film scholars, it presents film music as a topic that can be handled with more confidence and breadth, because the musicological analysis of the musical text (the score) is not required in this approach. To musicologists, it provides a way to deepen their understanding of and insights into the formal and stylistic ways in which music interacts and combines with the other cinematic components.

In 2015 we celebrated the 750th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth. In light of the popularity of Dante’s imagery, channelled through a variety of the arts and across national contexts for more than seven centuries, this study explores practices of adaptation and remediation of Dante’s Inferno through the cinematic screen in 2005-2015 as well as its relationship with digital technologies. Despite our understanding of Dante and the screen being enriched by the contribution of several scholars such as Antonella Braida, Luisa Calé, Dennis Looney and Nick Havely, amongst others, very little has been written about the aesthetic, social and political impact of digital technologies on cinematic adaptations of the infernal imagery. In order to fill this gap in knowledge, this study investigates the remediate power of digital technology by simultaneously exploring its involvement and its impact. This includes an examination of film production, conservation, circulation and reception. In order to do so, I scrutinise the following three key case studies: Milano Film’s Inferno (ITA,1911), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò – 120 Days of Sodom (ITA, 1975) and David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (CAN, FR, ITA, POR, 2012). This multi-disciplinary approach offers a theoretical revision of the theory of adaptation, shifting from the enduring centrality of the ‘reference text’ to a more intermedial awareness of the pivotal role played by the cinematic screen. This enables an exploration of the cultural, political and social impact of Dante’s inspired infernal imagery in the 21st century.

This thesis offers an assessment of the influence, importance and impact of a body of films from the mid 1970s to date that, it argues, constitute a Latin American Queer Cinema. It is divided into two sections. The first aims to articulate a theorisation of three main issues surrounding homosexuality in different Latin American societies: the first chapter analyses notions of gender and sexuality that are paramount in the construction of such identities for queer subjects in Latin America. The second chapter deals with issues of male effeminacy, how the stereotype of the maricon has become synonymous with homosexuality in the popular imaginary, and how it might be reclaimed as authentic. Chapter three analyses issues of masculine homosexuality in a series of films in which the main protagonists do not correspond to this stereotype -- the closet and passing are studied as are notions of hetero-patriarchy and masculinity. Chapter four focuses on the relationship between mestizo identity and homosexuality, gay identity and the race-class nexus, technologies of the body, and gay youth identities. The second main section analyses cinematic representations of the transvestite experience and how the figure of the transvestite has been utilised in cinema as an instrument to not only contest heteronormativity, but also to refine the different dimensions of sexuality that mainstream culture understands as related to biological sex. Chapter five studies issues of transvestism in Cuba in terms of both the geographical spaces in which trans subjects and their identities operate, and also the way that camp, as a queer strategy, is reappropriated by such subjects for political/politicised ends. Chapter six moves the argument to the Mexican Isthmus and explores the way that trans subjects are considered to have a third gender identity separate from the biological man/woman. Finally chapter seven explores cross-dressing and transvestism in fiction cinema and how such films try to challenge notions of trans identity and even queer identity, but ultimately fail to achieve this as they all seem to subscribe to notions of gender and sexuality as understood and assimilated within heteronormativity.

In the 1990s a new generation of socially engaged filmmakers came to be known as le jeune cinéma français. Many of these filmmakers examined a whole range of social issues, with a particular aim of focusing on the representation of the French family. In these family portraits, the father, both as the traditional head of the family institution and as a stand-in for the State, is notably missing. This thesis inquires into the paternal absence in le jeune cinéma, and traces how the paternal crisis is related to the filmmakers’ practice of auteur cinema. The jeunes auteurs, rather than participating directly in political debate, make a case for cinema as a tool for an ethical engagement with the reality of those left behind by socio-economic change. Drawing on philosophical thinking developed by Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, this thesis discusses the ways le jeune cinéma seeks to move away from the oedipal association of the father with the law, and thereby to articulate the recognition of an ethical fraternity as opening up to the care and hospitality towards the Other. This thesis outlines specific ideals of new paternal models that le jeune cinéma proposes. Starting with an Introduction which develops the points made above and sets out the theoretical framework, this study then moves on to consider six emblematic films which alter the way the father is conceived through diverse paternal reconfigurations. Chapter 1 focuses on the figure of postcolonial father in Bye-bye (1995), while chapter 2 looks at dysfunctional patriarchy and the phantasmal return of the father in Y aura-t-il de la neige à noël? (1996). Chapter 3 then links the rural dystopia of La Vie de Jésus (1997) to its recourse to the paternal. Chapter 4 recuperates the disappearing working-class fathers of Marius et Jeannette (1997) by contextualising the film’s famille recomposée. In chapter 5, we see how Rosetta (1999) reconstructs the filial relation as a form of fraternal proximity and becoming-friend. Finally, chapter 6 explores the shift from paternal search to fraternal positioning written in the dynamics between the auteurs and the star of Drôle de Félix (2000). I conclude that le jeune cinéma must be understood as an articulation of changing landscape from paternal hegemony to the ethics of fraternity, and as such it replaces the way the auteurs are conceptualised from masters of their own narrative to the rendered vision of alterity and otherness.

Andre Bazin worked as a film critic in France from the time he left university in 1941 up to his early death in 1958. He was born in Angers in 1918 and moved to the ancient French Atlantic port of la Rochelle in 1923. After rejecting a career in teaching, Bazin started writing as a film critic during the War for L 'Ecran Parisienne, and in 1951 co-founded Cahiers du Cinema. Bazin engaged in debate with the leading French intellectuals although his profession lacked the status of a Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Mauss, or Bataille. Bazin also mixed with, and was accepted as an equal by the most prominent figures in the arts, including Renoir, Cocteau, Chaplin and Richter. Bazin's legacy has nonetheless been contentious: while some consider him to be the 'Godfather' of modern film studies and stylistics, others regard Bazin as a naive idealist who believed in the potential of perfect realism in cinematic production, while overlooking its hidden but politically obvious construction. What follows is neither a direct response to this argument nor an attempt to resolve it. This thesis aims to show that Bazin did not merely engage in a debate about realism and its imperfection, but, far more importantly, was caught up in the debate by his position as a journalist writing for his market and his editors. By analysing a broad group of essays, some of which have not been translated, there is an opportunity to see if there is any underlying connections between what looks a disparate and broad body of work, for a variety of editors. He published almost 2600 articles in this period, and some of great length. The idea that they should remain consistent is in many ways unlikely. But if there is something we can draw out of the texts, we shall at least have a method for doing so. The following, then, consists firstly of a detailed textual analysis of Bazin's writings, and secondly of a review of the field of study which immediately preceded the more recent studies of the writings of Andre Bazin. It is to give to the texts a 'being,' which can then precede the various 'essences' of his critics and interpreters. Because the definitive biographical work on Bazin has already been published, and because there is little that can be added to the biographical information on Bazin. Furthermore, all details of Bazin's private life have been withheld under the instructions of Bazin's late wife Jannine.