Paul Schrader (Contemporary Film Directors) - Softcover

Kouvaros, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252075080 ISBN 13: 9780252075087

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Synopsis

As the first full-length study on Paul Schrader's films, this book examines the different styles of his work and the multiple influences on which it draws. A defining feature of Schrader's career is his capacity to engage in a range of collaborations and production contexts while returning to a consistent set of themes, character types, and dramatic scenarios. Going beyond the affirmation of a directorial vision, Schrader creates a cinema driven by issues of obsession, memory, and the difficult nature of experience. Representative of a new generation of American writer-directors of the 1970s, Schrader's films highlight the tension between old and new ways of telling a story and between the maintenance of commercial formulas and openness to individual expression.
 
George Kouvaros draws on a personal interview conducted with Schrader and the director's prior commentary to trace common motivations and impulses behind such well-known films as Light Sleeper, American Gigolo, Affliction, Auto Focus, Taxi Driver, and Patty Hearst. Kouvaros reads Schrader's films not only in terms of a number of important themes such as male obsession and estrangement, but also in regard to harder to define issues that include melancholia, trauma, and the complex linkages of violence and guilt that bind individuals to places and each other.

About this title

About the Author

George Kouvaros is an associate professor in film in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Where Does It Happen? John Cassavetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point and coeditor of Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance.

Review

"A good book for film students and Schrader enthusiasts, and it provides ample springboards for further discussion of the director's oeuvre."--Pop Matters

"Schrader was a big part of the American film renaissance of the 1970s—which produced films that challenged and provoked, although they sometimes failed to find an audience—and Kouvaros offers a good argument as to why his films matter."--Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0252075080
• ISBN 13: 9780252075087
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184