This thesis seeks to determine how representations of dyadic teen homosocial bonds and relationships in film lend themselves to queer possibilities. Looking at teens in film across genre, certain types of dyadic homosocial relationships emerge: the best friendship, the antagonistic teen girl friendship, the boys friendship within a wider homosocial milieu, and friendships which fit these types but include gay and lesbian characters. I ground the research by establishing a record of the films released theatrically in the UK between 2000 and 2009 with teens as primary characters, and develop a qualitative and textual analysis of dyadic homosocial relationship types which illuminates their queer possibilities as well as the modes of denial and compensation which may accompany the threat those queer possibilities represent. As it investigates the policing of gender and heterosexual norms in teen homosocial relationships in key texts such as Aquamarine (Allen 2006), Superbad (Mottola 2007), Thirteen (Hardwicke 2003), The Covenant (Harlin 2006), Evil (Håfström 2003), and My Summer of Love (Pawlikowski 2004), the research here expands teen film studies, and applies queer reading practices to an often under-analysed segment of film. It also contributes to gender studies, as the findings here point to the ways that boys continue to be tied to physicality, violence, and athleticism, while girls continue to be tied to mirrors, masquerade, and manipulation. The move to include a variety of genres allows a consideration of how genre-specific tools of analysis, such as those developed in relation to the teen film genre or to dyadic homosocial relationship films such as the buddy film and female friendship film, can be productively mobilised across genres. Issues such as denial of homosocial desire through displacement, triangulated relationships, and passing heterosexual foils link these films to the history of films about homoerotic homosocial friendships. I argue here that queer possibilities are present in a wide variety of otherwise heteronormative films. My arguments centre on structures of desire and denial within homosocial friendships, as well as to the similarities between the heteronormative representations of homosocial desire and those present in specifically gay and lesbian narratives. The ways that these emerge are gender and age specific. By bringing out the denied and repressed homoerotic desires in these films, I demonstrate their existence in various forms. The thesis demonstrates that, in keeping with dyadic homosocial relationships between adult characters, in representations of dyadic homosocial bonds, the boundaries between homosocial/homosexual remains fluid in friendships between teen girls while it is much more rigidly separated in friendships between teen boys, primarily through homophobia, even in films containing gay and lesbian main characters.

This thesis contends that a number of popular Hollywood films from the 1990s present evidence of a transformation in the legitimate ways of acting for white heterosexual men in contemporary Western metropolitan society. I argue that the transformation is intimately tied to the rising dominance of what I call a neoliberal ‘narrative of legitimation’. What is significant about my intervention, and distinguishes it from previous studies of representations of masculinity in film, is the use of the theoretical lens of legitimation and my focus upon late capitalism as a normalising principle. Each of the four chapters is dedicated to a close reading of a single film, Falling Down, Se7en, American Psycho and Fight Club. Through an interrogation of the films, as well as an appraisal of the critical literature that has responded to them, I will argue that a fundamental change has taken place in the legitimate expectations, motivations and justifications that inform the representation of masculinity in late-twentieth-century Hollywood cinema. The necessity for such a change is framed in the films as a response to an urban environment represented as a cynical, indifferent and chaotic hell that has to be resigned to as the only ‘real’ reality. My analysis proposes that through the narrative trajectory of these films conflicting models of masculine conduct are put forward yet successively abandoned, leaving only a single model that is fully aligned to neoliberal ends. This model abandons any attachment to family, nation or community and affirms a resigned individualism that merely maintains itself, unable to attach to or affect the world around it. Such a conflict of narratives, however, also leaves open the possibility of attesting to alternative narratives incommensurable with the prevailing neoliberal narrative of legitimation.

This thesis explores the political implications of Gilles Deleuze's two-volume work on the cinema (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [2005a] and Cinema 2: The Time-Image [2005b]). I argue that counter to the common reading of these works as being primarily concerned with aesthetics and philosophy, Deleuze's cinema books should be understood as a political critique of the operations of cinema. I outline the main arguments set out by these works as a political formulation and argue that they should be directly related to Deleuze's more explicitly political writings. In particular, I argue that these books should be read alongside Deleuze's later 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' (1992), which re-addresses some of the most significant aspects of his earlier work on cinema following a transforation in media technologies and social organisation. I argue that Deleuze's time-image and his later conceptualisation of control should be understood as forming the two poles of his theorisation of cinema and visual culture. When addressed as connected concepts, a significant political dimension emerges in this area of Deleuze's thought, focusing on a time-image that opens a range of possibilities for the future ordering of the world and a system of control that will recurrently close and eliminate these possibilities. Through a series of studies of film texts I will develop the political implications of Deleuze's thinking on cinema and visual culture in order ot show how the forces of control and the time-image operate and how these concepts can be systematised and further integrated into Deleuze's wider political thought.

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.