Setting out to provide a definitive history of the European Film Fund (EFF), the purpose of this thesis is as follows: first, to draw attention to the many exile and refugee organisations by examining one of them, the EFF. As a study of a refugee organisation founded as a result of Nazism, my examination of the EFF not only fills an existing gap in film history as far as the EFF itself is concerned. Refugee organisations in general have received scant attention by exile scholars. By making one refugee organisation the focus of my inquiry, I am also highlighting the presence of women in the topic of exile as two women, Liesl Frank, wife of the writer Bruno Frank, and Charlotte Dieterle, wife of the director William Dieterle, were at the centre of the EFF. My investigation of this organisation demonstrates that women played a much larger role in exile and exile communities than history and literature have thus far accorded them. Additionally, I show how the political situation after 1933, including apathy by the international community, led to the founding of the EFF. Lastly, by shifting the focus away from figureheads of the émigré community to below-the-line film artists, technicians, theatre artists and so on, I foreground those refugees whose lives have hitherto been obscured by their more famous fellow émigrés.

The dissertation presents an account of the contemporary American action cinema. The themes, stereotypes and iconography associated with the genre are explored through detailed discussion of film examples. Films are also situated in relation to the particular context of production and consumption associated with 'new Hollywood', including genre hybrids, the blockbuster as a form and the importance of new forms of distribution such as home video. Though framed as a genre study, the account is also centrally concerned with an exploration of gender. The dissertation presents an account of the articulation of masculinity within the genre and engages with developing debates in this field. It is suggested that contemporary images of men, widely discussed as new, can be usefully explored in relation to the generic history from which they emerge. The articulation of masculinity in the genre is explored through both genre codes and star images. Recent distinctive roles for women in the action cinema are further situated in a generic context. The research also explores the contention that representations of gender should be understood within an exploration of other discourses including race, class and sexuality. The place of black performers in the genre is discussed, and the extent to which recent films reiterate and/or develop existing stereotypes is addressed in this context. The limitations of ideological and narrative analysis in relation to a political exploration of the popular cinema is explored, with a consideration of cinematic spectacle and the place of fantasy identifications and symbolic configurations of power. The political ambivalence of popular imagery is emphasised in this context. It is argued that action films, which are often dismissed as simplistic in political terms articulate complex configurations of gendered and other identities.

This thesis explores the films of post-war Japanese director Suzuki Seijun (1923-), who has yet to be the subject of an extended study in the English language. The thesis aims to provide a close textual analysis of several of Suzuki’s films, with an emphasis on his crime and gangster films of the 1960s. At the same time, it aims to discuss and determine the significance of these films, and the consistent stylistic features that emerge from them, in multiple historical, ideological, and theoretical contexts. For example, while the thesis emphasises the importance of Suzuki’s films to formal and ideological developments in Japanese cinema from 1950s to the present day, it also claims significance to these films in reference to major issues in contemporary film theory, such as modernity, genre, masculinity, identification, reflexivity, violence, spectatorship, and masochism. The thesis begins by claiming that a ‘differential aesthetic’ is evident in Suzuki’s films, defined by a variety of textual features such as editing discontinuities, non-diegetic colours, graphics, and theatrical effects, repetitive structures of narration, and inter-textual references. Such features were highly unconventional, and in many cases deemed unacceptable, in the context of Japanese studio genre production in the 1960s. The rest of the thesis proposes to fully explore this ‘Suzuki difference’ in a variety of historical and theoretical contexts. I have chosen the concept of negativity and the ‘negative aesthetic’ to unify the thesis as a whole, arguing that the Suzuki aesthetic is not merely differential, but attempts a negation of formal and ideological conventions of studio filmmaking for the purpose of a wide-ranging, satirical critique of post-war Japanese culture. In several respects, the negative aesthetic links Suzuki to global tendencies in the transformation of cinematic form and narration in the 1960s, and his films can contribute to an understanding of these transitions.

This thesis aims to identify the extent to which popular music functionality in UK and US film can be regarded as a developmental process, and, in particular, the importance of the contribution of the 13-year period bounded by the films A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, UK, 1964) and Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, USA, 1977) to this. It also explores salient cultural, historical and industrial factors which may have influenced development. Both these areas have been largely neglected to date. Within the period identified above, three key phases have been recognized which each contributed to specific innovations and developments. These have been labelled ‘The British Invasion Phase’, ‘The New Hollywood Alienation Phase’ and ‘The Disco Phase’. For each of these a primary film text (A Hard Day’s Night, The Graduate and Saturday Night Fever respectively) is analyzed in detail, with reference to the work of Claudia Gorbman and Jeff Smith on the principles of musical function in film. In addition, these chapters are prefaced by an examination of a further stage, ‘The Classic American Musical Phase’, covering a period of relative inactivity, in respect of developments in popular music function, prior to the ‘British Invasion Phase’. Examples of two of Elvis Presley’s films, Girls! Girls! Girls! and It Happened at the World’s Fair, are examined to illustrate why innovation was lacking at this time. As this thesis is not only concerned with what innovations occurred but also why they manifested specifically during a particular phase, individual chapters extend beyond pure film analysis into a study of crucial elements of cultural and popular music history associated with aspects of The British Invasion, New Hollywood and Disco.

The history of the Hong Kong-based film production company Milkyway Image from its inception in 1996 to present day examplifies the metamorphosis of the contemporary Hong Kong film industry to an era characterised by Hong Kong’s integration into a Chinese national context and the transnationalisation of world cinema. Drawing upon literature that studies film companies, this thesis adopts an integrative research framework that primarily combines industrial and discourse analysis to investigate Milkyway from a range of perspectives. It looks into the company’s ownership and organisational structure and the constitution of its creative team, comparing its similarities and differences to previous Hong Kong film companies and discussing how Milkyway bases itself on contemporary industry and its production models, business experiences and human resources from established studios such as the Shaw Brothers. Secondly, I explore Milkyway’s business and production practices in Hong Kong and mainland China by examining its genre films, including crime thrillers and romantic comedies, illustrating the Hong Kong film industry’s cooperation, negotiation and resistance in the process of Hong Kong cinema’s mainlandisation post-transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China. I then examine the discourse regarding Milkyway both inside and outside of Hong Kong, focussing on how the company and its work are received by various players in the film industry and community. The Hong Kong cultural community’s interpretations of Milkyway’s films represent an effort to maintain local cinema’s independence and local culture’s autonomy. International cultural bodies, such as film festivals, distributors and critics, receive Milkyway’s productions against the background of the increased globalisation of cinema and the development of the film industry and film institutions. Milkyway’s image changes as the company’s films travel across contexts and as various cultural forces provide multiple understandings of contemporary Hong Kong cinema. In shaping the discourse about Milkyway and its work, the company plays an active role by taking advantage of transnational platforms, such as film festivals, and interacting with film journalism and academia.

The advancement of theoretical screenwriting has been limited to popularized “how-to” techniques to further investigate the field. These techniques were based on internalised rules-of-thumb drawn from inductive observations of existing screenplays. Such analyses failed to provide answers to two troubling fundamental questions: first, what makes stories emerge in the context of narrative, and second, what are the underlying dynamics that allow a screenplay to function as a unified whole? The contribution of Screenplectics lies in first, by explaining how a screenplay functions synergistically, and appropriating the necessary metaphors, systemically. And second, by explaining the mechanism that is employed between compositional interactions in various structural levels that allows the coherent accumulative derivative we call story to emerge. The transition from an empirical to a theoretical perspective is achieved by examining such dynamics under the prism of holism and through the introduction of characteristics of complex systems: a network of components arranged hierarchically that interact parallel to one another in non-linear ways. This hierarchy shapes the foundation of the different layers of structure in a screenplay: deep, intermediate and surface structure. This research consolidates the notion that for the comprehension of such complex dynamics a more comprehensive theory of narrative is required.

This thesis is my attempt to establish a foundation, based on the philosophy of Objectivism as it was developed and elaborated by the Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, for the construction of an Objectivist aesthetics of cinema. After contextualizing and explicating Rand's philosophy, I make the case that, propaedeutic to the construction of a new aesthetics of cinema, it is incumbent upon film scholars to refute the irrational and immoral philosophical premises that have long been destroying the philosophy of art in general and the discipline of film studies in particular. Due to the troubling combination of its contemporaneity, extremism, and considerable influence, I focus initially on the philosophical school of poststructuralism - which I contend has, since the 1960s, served as the default philosophical foundation for film scholars - before ultimately moving on to refute what I call the Kantian aesthetic tradition, of which I demonstrate poststructuralism is a deadly symptom. Upon clearing away this philosophical debris, I set about arguing for the probative value of an Objectivist aesthetics of cinema by reigniting long-dormant debates about the validity of interpretation and the role of evaluation in film criticism. In so doing, I hope to demonstrate the value of an aesthetic orientation which I term aesthetic perfectionism, for it is my contention that perfectionism - which has recently emerged at the heart of key developments in film studies through the work of Stanley Cavell, which I argue motivated Rand's philosophical enterprise, and which I argue should motivate the philosophical enterprises of all scholars who strive to do justice to all that the cinema has to offer - is the key to unlocking an Aesthetics of Life capable of transforming the discipline of film studies.

This thesis develops a theoretically-informed approach with which to analyse the aesthetics of the adaptation of superhero comic books into blockbuster films. Pervasive modes of thinking present superhero blockbusters as artistically degraded products that are not worthy of aesthetic analysis. I demonstrate that exploring the ways in which superhero blockbusters adapt comic book style and form reveals aesthetic sophistication and multiplicities of meaning. Engaging with comic book and film history also enables me to identify ways in which superhero blockbusters have contributed to the development of Hollywood’s blockbuster filmmaking paradigm. My approach combines models and concepts from studies of adaptation that employ poststructuralist theory. This theoretical framework explains transformations that content may undergo as it is adapted between the different forms available to comics and film, and enables examination of dialogues occurring in the vast networks of intertexts in which superhero blockbusters are situated. After my review of literature establishes the thesis’ theoretical underpinnings, my chapters undertake close textual analysis of three distinct case studies. The selection of case studies allows me to continue to develop my approach by examining different superhero archetypes, alongside significant contexts, trends and technologies that impact Hollywood blockbusters. Chapter one looks at the first superhero blockbuster, Superman: The Movie (1978). I begin by outlining, and exploring relations between, the range of Superman texts released prior to the film. Doing so reveals the qualities of the intertextual networks that comprise a superhero franchise. I then analyse the strategies that Superman: The Movie deploys to adapt and enter the network of Superman texts, before situating the film in the context of the emerging blockbuster paradigm in 1970s Hollywood. Chapters two and three analyse films produced in the twenty-first century, as superhero blockbusters gained a central position in Hollywood production. Chapter two evaluates the aesthetics of the Spider-Man trilogy (2002, 2004 and 2007) in relation to two contexts that are often considered to have facilitated the superhero blockbuster’s twenty-first century success: the increasing use and sophistication of digital filmmaking technologies in Hollywood, and the contemporary sociopolitical climate. Looking at the representation of bodies and space elucidates the ways in which the films incorporate digital filmmaking technologies into their adaptive practices and offer a sociopolitical commentary. Chapter three examines the strategies that films produced by Marvel Studios, with particular focus on team film The Avengers (2012), deploy to adapt the model of seriality that superhero comic books use to interconnect multiple series in a shared diegesis. The analysis focuses on ways in which The Avengers uses bodies and space to compress the expansive diegetic universe into a single film, and interrogates how these strategies shape the film’s sociopolitical meanings. My case studies demonstrate that the approach developed in this thesis illuminates the complex and equivocal meanings that the adaptive practices of superhero blockbusters generate.

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This thesis examines the representation of home movies in UK and US feature fiction films released between 1939-2013. For the purposes of the thesis home movies are defined as a subset of amateur (i.e. non-professional) film concerned with the representation of home and family and intended for domestic consumption. Home movies are further distinguished from home video and domestic productions recorded digitally referring specifically to films shot on, or connoting, small-gauge film. Drawing on James Moran’s notion of the ‘imaginary medium’ (There’s No Place Like Home Video, 2002) and the scholarship on the Imaginary in media, this thesis advances the concept of the ‘home movie imagination’ to describe the way in which cinema constructs home movies in the process of representation. Using textual analysis, this thesis identifies a series of shifts in cinematic depictions of home movies. Accordingly, each case study chapter focuses on a selection of examples which best exemplify these transitions and continuing trends. Placing cinematic home movies in the context of the histories of amateur film and small-gauge technology, this thesis demonstrates that home movies in fiction films should not be perceived as a reflection on developments of the technology, but studied specifically as fictional stylisations. The first chapter explores the emergence of home movies as a motif in feature fiction films, interrogating the technology’s pervasive association with wealth and spectacle in films released between 1939-1949. The second elaborates on these concerns, observing an incongruity between cinema’s continued affiliation of home movies with affluence and the developments in the social history of amateur filmmaking following the Second World War. Chapter Three looks at films released between 1964-1980, investigating the dual role of home movies deployed as sentimental reminders of lost familial cohesion and a tool to challenge the family ideal. Chapter Four focuses on the adaptations of Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon (1981) — Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986), Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002) — charting the impact which the advent of home video had on the representation of cinematic home movies. Home movie obsolescence is explored further in Chapter Five which interrogates the transition of home movies from an aim to memory (prop) to texture of memory (aesthetic). The final chapter focuses on the depiction of home movies in Super 8 (2011) and Frankenweenie (2012), investigating the nostalgia which they express towards the materiality of small-gauge technology. This thesis argues that home movies in feature fiction film constitute a unique, and widely overlooked, object of study. As films-within-films they frequently function as a self-reflexive device, a tool for filmmakers to reflect on their art. However, they are also specifically a domestic technology, focusing an inquiry into the role which media and mediation play in the cinematic construction of family narratives. Exploring the ways in which cinema constructs home movies in the process of representation the home movie imagination offers an innovative approach for studying the depiction of domestic moving image technologies, one which recognises their character as stylisations and responds to their historical variability.