Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to
The Apartment Complex offer global perspectives on films from a diverse set of genres—from film noir and comedy to horror and musicals—that use apartment living to explore modern urbanism's various forms and possibilities.
Trade Review"[
The Apartment Complex is] a concise, remarkably wide-ranging book on an unusual topic. ... Stark and satisfying. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." -- W. W. Dixon * Choice *
"
The Apartment Complex builds upon the premise of Wojcik’s earlier book that wedded cinema studies to urban studies. . . Its strength lies in how the individual essayists apply Wojcik’s thesis— developed for post–World War II American films— to the more recent output of international films and television." -- Carrie Rickey * Film Quarterly *
"Wojcik has produced a book unrestricted by the limits of genre, history, nation, or industry figure, and illuminates important visual and thematic connections between films in global screen culture." -- Anna Maria Sapountzi * Open Screens *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: What Makes the Apartment Complex? / Pamela Robertson Wojcik 1
1. Palaces of Pleasure and Deceit among the Clouds: The Depression-Era Cinematic Penthouse Plot / Merrill Schleier 21
2. From Walter Neff to C.C. Baxter: Billy Wilder's Apartment Plots / Steven Cohan 44
3. Alain Renais, Tsai Ming-liang, and the Apartment Plot Musical / Joe McElhaney 65
4. Movement and Stasis in Fassbinder's Apartment Plot / Michael DeAngelis 84
5. Housework, Sex Work: Feminist Ambivalence at 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles / Annamarie Jagose 105
6. Home's Invasion:
Repulsion and the Horror of Apartments / Veronica Fitzpatrick 126
7. Reattachment Theory: Gay Marriage and the Apartment Plot / Lee Wallace 145
8. "We Don't Need to Dream No More. We Got Real Estate":
The Wire, Urban Development, and the Racial Boundaries of the American Dream / Paula J. Massood 168
Bibliography 187
Contributors 195
Index 197
