An early career as a theatre director had a fundamental, life-long impact on film director Joseph Losey, a factor consistently underestimated in critical and academic assessments of his filmmaking. Losey's stage work in 1930s New York bore the imprint of some of the early twentieth century's major theatre practitioners. He would translate their ideas into a distinctive cinematic language. This study regards Losey's film output as a cohesive whole, challenging commentators' habitual practice of dividing the director's career into discrete, often incongruous, chronological phases; in place of a compartmentalised view, the thesis articulates specific influences which are consistently reflected in Losey's cinema spanning five decades. The thesis outlines Losey's career in theatre, and explores his theatrical influences, especially Bertolt Brecht and Vsevelod Meyerhold. Close formal analysis of films from Losey's 37-year film career focuses on his mise en scene, his use of vertical space and of cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. Archive material from the British Film Institute and from Losey's alma mater, Dartmouth College in the United States, supports the film analysis. The thesis also examines his work with actors, and with playwrights, particularly Harold Pinter, and on Losey's adaptations of Brecht's Galileo and Ibsen's A Doll's House. Losey is here established as a hybrid figure whose highly personal screen style can be interpreted through his adherence to specific, well-established stage concepts. This research outcome points to revised evaluations of the work of Losey's contemporaries who made similar transitions from 1930s theatre in the United States into filmmaking.

This study investigates the representation of female identity and desire in Hollywood films with `makeover' narratives. It deploys some psychoanalytical methodologies, but seeks to avoid the totalising theory of earlier feminist approaches. Blending textual analysis and contextual enquiry in an innovative and discursive manner, the films are understood and extensively historicised in terms of their contemporaneous socio-cultural environment. The key aims are to assess the extent to which female subjectivity is articulated, appraise the forms of femininity constructed, and analyse the ways in which the films relate to and are indicative of shifting gender values. Two periods, both unstable in terms of women's position in American society, are sampled and compared: during and after World War II, when traditional gender roles were in flux, and the post-feminist present when women have experienced simultaneously the gains secured in the previous generation and counter-currents of backlash and retraction. Analogous case studies facilitate the comparison of gender representation in the two periods, starting with familiar key texts (Now, Voyager and Pretty Woman), examined afresh through the lens of makeover. Close analyses entail star studies and aspects of genre, although the central focus remains representation. Some topics receive pioneering academic scrutiny, including Annie Get Your Gun (withdrawn from distribution for almost thirty years), and Goldie Hawn, whose light-heartedness has perhaps deterred the cultural appraisal she merits. Much evidence suggests the makeover narrative to be an effect of patriarchal forces: women are objectified after prescribed notions of femininity; the psychoanalytical element of the study helps explain the role of male desire in the female subject's attempt to achieve a coherent sense of self. However, the fluidity of female identity also suggests possibilities for progressive change; a burgeoning female consciousness is evident in the later films alongside more conservative impulses, showing the different ideological views makeover narratives can mobilise. Finally, makeover films provide a platform for the woman to reposition herself, possibly transforming her personal and social identity, with particular examples relating to class, ethnicity and age.

Investigations of American identity in classical Hollywood director Frank Capra's films have almost exclusively relied upon inward-looking approaches to nationalism that attempt to establish what is American by demonstrating similarities with other American reference points (in particular, see Carney 1986). However, as this thesis argues, Capra's construction of national identity was not established within an exclusively national context; his films frequently took an outward-looking approach to nationalism. Seven of Capra's feature films were set (at least in part) outside the United States, his World War 11 orientation films examined America's relationship with both Allied and Axis countries, and even in his fictional films set inside the United States Capra's American characters repeatedly discussed, fantasized about, and interacted with representatives from other nations. Using Capra's recurring engagement with the Far East as a case study-because, as Eric Smoodin contended, "for a director known for his 'American' themes, Capra made more movies about Far Eastern locales than did most other Hollywood directors from the period" (2004: 54)-this thesis interrogates the intersection between authorship and national ideology, raising questions about the boundaries of American culture and American cinema between 1922 and 1961. Using close textual analysis supported by archival research, it investigates shifts in what Capra's America has meant over time, both to Capra and to those who have studied Capra; representations of Asian/Americans in American Madness (1932), Broadway Bill (1934), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944); the blurred ,Orientalist binary in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933); American imperialism in Submarine (1928) and Lost Horizon (1937); ideologies of Asian national identity in The Battle of China (1944) and Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945); and South Sea exoticism in It Happened One Night (1934), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), and A Hole in the Head (1959).

Discussions of Irish representations in early American cinema often cite vaudeville as the source of crude Irish stereotypes. This thesis examines representations of the Irish in vaudeville from its beginnings and relates these to current debates regarding the function and significance of Irish stereotypes in early American cinema. The study of the Irish in popular culture has been recognised as one area where further research could shed light on ethnic identity formation among members of the Irish diaspora (Moloney 2009). To date, vaudeville has been overlooked in this regard. My thesis seeks to understand how Irish representations in vaudeville might have contributed to the development of an Irish-American identity during a period that witnessed the peak of both the Irish-born and second generation Irish population in America. This thesis makes a significant original contribution to knowledge. It adds to current debates in Irish film studies and shows that Irishness in vaudeville was imbued with meanings that were to become deeply embedded in American popular culture. It draws on a wide range of primary material, the majority of which has been neglected up to now in relation to vaudeville representations of the Irish. I have compiled a database of largely forgotten Irish vaudeville acts and show that Irish vaudeville performers contributed to images of themselves and other groups. I also present evidence of vaudeville plays which directly addressed Irish nationalist politics. Gender too influenced Irish representations and I illustrate the ways in which idealised versions of Irish masculinity and femininity were constructed in vaudeville. I conclude that vaudeville was not merely the source for early cinema's crude Irish stereotypes. Rather, I argue that the vaudeville stage provided one venue in which an Irish-American identity was constructed and negotiated, and that its Irish representations were more complex than has previously been understood

In late 1980, eleven films that shared the same basic story-structure were produced by North American independent filmmakers. Each of these films depicted a shadowy blade-wielding killer stalking and murdering a group of hedonistic young people in an everyday setting. As of summer 1980, only four examples of this type of film had ever been shown in US theatres. By the time that most of the eleven films had been distributed in summer 1981, a new filmtype had been widely recognised by industry personnel. the trade and popular press and young theatregoers. This thesis examines the emergence. evolution and establishment of that film-type between 1974 and 1981. I combine textual and industry analyses to explain the developments that caused the first cycle of the teen slasher film to unfold. Whereas scholars and popular writers have typically framed teen slashers as ultra-violent exploitation that was crafted for the drive-in circuit and for male patrons, this thesis demonstrates that production and textual content were governed by different principles. I show that independent filmmakers actually fashioned teen slashers like Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980) to appeal to major studio distributors. To increase their chances of securing a distribution deal from these companies, filmmakers selfregulated violent content, mobilised textual elements from contemporaneous blockbusters and crafted their films to appeal to female as well as male youth. The thesis builds upon the work of industry historians such as David A. Cook, Peter Kramer and Thomas Schatz to contribute to understandings of Hollywood in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s. It also looks to enrich understandings of the US and Canadian independent sectors in this period. The case of the teen slasher reveals that these segments of the North American film industry were more heavily intertwined than has been commonly assumed.

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier la circulation de représentations et de thématiques transgressives entre deux pôles de la production cinématographique américaine contemporaine, le cinéma indépendant et le cinéma mainstream, du début des années 1990 à 2007. Comparer entre elles les œuvres issues de secteurs de production différents a permis d’étudier, sur une période et dans une société données, les fluctuations du seuil de tolérance face à des représentations et des thématiques taboues, ou simplement dérangeantes. On a ici tenté de déterminer, d’une part ce qui peut ou non circuler d’un pôle à l’autre, d’autre part les modifications qui permettent et légitiment la circulation de thématiques. On a opéré un va et vient entre analyses internes, comparaison des œuvres d’un pôle à l’autre, et analyses externes, faisant intervenir des questions génétiques et des enjeux de réception. Décider de la portée choquante d’une représentation nécessite en effet de prendre en compte le contexte de production et de réception qui la place au cœur d’un réseau d’attentes et d’interprétations susceptible d’en atténuer ou à l’inverse d’en amplifier la portée. La notion de transgression a été à la fois définie a priori, dans une perspective éthique, en mettant l’accent sur la permanence de certains grands tabous, catégories universellement susceptibles d’entraîner chez le spectateur un sentiment de malaise, et être replacée dans une histoire culturelle des bienséances, traversée par des courants contradictoires et pas toujours linéaires. Ce travail se situe donc à la croisée du socio-culturel – questions de réception, de contexte culturel, les œuvres s’inscrivant dans un contexte social qui en modifie la portée – et de l’analyse interne – puisque l’horizon de ces recherches reste l’analyse de stratégies esthétiques ou narratives internes aux films. La présente étude est donc divisée en deux – mainstream d’un côté, "indépendant", de l’autre, et conçue pour fonctionner en miroir : s’y font écho des chapitres similaires, construits autour de thématiques qu’on retrouve de part et d’autre, la structure reflétant donc l’approche comparatiste développée plus haut. / The aim of this work is to offer an examination of the way "edgy" images and themes have been "circulating" between mainstream and Independent cinema in the United States, from 1990 to 2007, during which those two distinct economic territories have tended to merge. By comparing films that originate from different industrial locations, I tried to determine the actual boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable themes and representations, and to examine whether and how those boundaries have fluctuated at a particular moment, both diachronically and synchronically. The secondary goal of this work was to analyze "from the inside", through detailed text-centered studies, what textual strategies were used by the films in order to make the transgression more palatable. Both textual and extratextual tools of analysis have been used through this study, which took into consideration both the "texts" and their "paratexts", distribution, promotion, and reception. Laying bare the mechanisms of regulation and tolerance required to consider the films from the stage of their genesis to their distribution and reception. Therefore, I tried to analyze the thresholds of representation through a combination of textual analysis and metatextual analysis, laying bare the process of negotiation that takes place in the contemporary Hollywood as well as in its margins. The notion of "transgression" has been defined by taking into account both "universal" topics, which are not likely to fluctuate much through time, and topics of titillation or scandal that are more specific and linked to a specific cultural or sociological context. This study is divided in two parts, mainstream and Independent, that are meant to echo with each other.