Despite being a central figure of Hollywood’s Classical era, Robert Taylor can now be regarded as a ‘lost’ or forgotten screen star, an interesting paradox when considering his continued success and longevity during his career. This thesis presents the first substantial study of Taylor’s star persona, examining its initial construction and subsequent developments from 1934 to 1969. Considering ideas surrounding gender, ageing and film genre, the thesis draws on existing literature on stardom and masculinity, and examines Taylor’s persona within the histories of both Hollywood’s Classical era and mid-20th century America. This helps to place Taylor within the wider industrial, cultural and social contexts in which he worked. Taylor, I argue, presents the model for the ‘perfect’ star because of his ability to consistently fit the film industry across time. While star studies continues to concentrate on more unusual stars, I feel that it is important to discuss what makes a typical star, the kind which Taylor embodied. This typicality, however, did not prevent him enjoying a long and successful career and he remained a popular leading man for 35 years until his death. The complex paradox of Taylor’s persona remaining consistently recognisable while also developing over time allowed him to seemingly seamlessly fit changes within America and the film industry. Furthermore, as he matured he developed a sense of nostalgia strongly connected with Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’. The findings in this thesis are drawn from extensive viewing of most of Taylor’s films and television appearances and the examination of ephemeral material, including magazine covers and press articles, in order to assess Taylor’s on- and off-screen personas and their development over time. The thesis takes a mostly chronological approach, allowing Taylor’s persona to be placed within specific historical moments. Decade overviews are presented alongside detailed case studies covering key genres Taylor worked in. Through doing this, I not only trace Taylor’s star persona over the entirety of his career, but am able to compare his career trajectory and constructed image to other (similar) male stars working at this time. Contextualising my analysis of Taylor’s star persona further allows me to develop ideas around the concepts of male beauty, men as object of the erotic gaze, white American masculinity, and the (somewhat unusual) longevity of a career initially based on a star’s good looks. Most notably, I identify Taylor’s importance to Hollywood cinema by demonstrating how a star persona like his can ‘fit’ so well, and for so long, that it almost becomes invisible, resulting in the star becoming ‘lost’ or forgotten after their career has ended.

This thesis is an interpretation of three films by the Greek Cypriot director Michael Cacoyannis: Stella, 1955), To koritsi me ta mavra/A Girl in Black, 1956 and To teleftaio psema/A Matter of Dignity, 1958. These films appear early in Cacoyannis' career and very little has been written on them. My thesis seeks to show that they are accomplished and complex films, which merit close attention, both in virtue of their dramatic form and because of the ethical questions they raise regarding individual autonomy and the force of archaic ethical norms. The aim of this thesis is to interpret these films by examining the evolving motivations of their protagonists. The thesis seeks to show that the dramatic form of the films renders the agency of the protagonist partly intransparent. In order to show this, my thesis examines, on the one hand, how characterisation, perspective, character relationships and the development of the drama provide an internal context for agency in each film. On the other hand, the interpretation seeks to tease out the ethical implications and stakes of the dramatic action in each film. These implications, I argue, are structured by a thematic ambivalence running through these films between modernity, understood as subjective freedom, and archaic ethical norms, implying a limit to subjective freedom. In the approach to the films' dramatic form and their ethical implications, I am indebted to Hegel's aesthetic and ethical theory. I use the Hegelian term 'modern tragedy' to characterise both the dramatic form of these films and the ethical situation of their protagonists. I also situate these films within international auteur cinema of the 1950s and early 1960s. The thesis aims, thus, to contribute to scholarship on European auteur cinema of the mid-20th century. It also aims to be a contribution to the study of agency and ethics in film in general.

The thesis proposes a comparative textual research on Hungarian and Romanian cinema by setting up a model that informs the implicit cinematic reflection on socialism in film. By establishing two aesthetic categories – horizontal and vertical enclosure –, the thesis argues that the spatial structure of the narratives reveals and alludes to the oppressive policy of the Hungarian and Romanian socialist regimes. The first part of the research scrutinises the space in Romanian cinema, and investigates the birth of the vertical enclosure. The analysis focuses on the spatial representation of Bucharest, that is the claustrophobic illustration of the urban landscape and its space depicted by the tools of notorious surveillance on screen. As argued in the thesis, the architectural forms and their film representations build up a spatial constellation identical to Bentham’s Panopticon discussed by Michel Foucault. The second part of the investigation concentrates on Hungarian cinema and the evolution of horizontal enclosure in film. Through textual analysis of the selected films that are set on the Great Hungarian Plain, the thesis discusses the allegorical use of space during and after socialism. Therefore, while concentrating on the circularity of the location and the mise-en-scène of the films – that refer to the isolation and indefiniteness of space – the author argues that the directors recall the parabolic language of the cinematic corpus of the socialist epoch. As concluded by the work, the contemporary art cinema of Romania and Hungary both reference socialism by using space as the main device for the implicit textual reflections. In this way, horizontal and vertical enclosure also emphasise the revival of the forms of the socialist aesthetics.

My research explores Alfred Hitchcock’s use of adaptation and the impact that this has on his status as an ‘auteur’. The aim, through looking at a cross section of his work, is to produce the basis for an adaptation model that could be used to examine his entire body of work, accounting for all influences, extratextual references, intertextualities, sequels, remakes and most importantly, other authors. By exploring Hitchcock’s use of the theatrical (a subject that is often ignored) and his lesser earlier films, we can begin to form the foundations for this model. By looking at his adaptation of a particular author and the textual evolution of one of his most iconic films, we are able to put this model to the test. Chapter one is the introduction, which looks at Hitchcock’s status within cinematic history, while also examining the current state of Hitchcock scholarship, auteur theory and adaptations studies. Chapter two examines the theatrical adaptations of Hitchcock’s British period, specifically shining light upon texts that are often ignored or maligned by theoretical study. Chapter three discusses the American theatrical adaptations, specifically looking at the role of the ‘meta-text’ and Hitchcock’s fascination with recreating the theatrical. Chapter four explores Hitchcock’s relationship with Daphne du Maurier, examining his adaptation of her work, overall themes, characters and ideologies. This chapter also presents an original reading of The Birds, which examines how Hitchcock’s film is more indebted to Du Maurier’s novels than her shot story of avian horror. Chapter five examines the evolution of Psycho. Hitchcock’s adaptation of, amongst others, Robert Bloch and Henri-Georges Clouzot will be discussed, as will the multiple sequels, remakes and exploitations that, in turn, adapt his own film. It will be argued that these texts are in fact adapting Psycho’s influences and origins as much as the film itself. Chapter six is the conclusion where the findings are analysed and the model of adaptation, which positions Hitchcock at the centre as a collector of texts is discussed. In occupying this position the notion of him as an ‘auteur’ is erased and instead he becomes the ‘Master of Adaptation’.

Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.