Description
Book SynopsisThe swimming pool frequently appears in film not merely as a setting but as a dynamic site where social, political, cultural and aesthetic forces converge. What is it about this space that has so fascinated filmmakers and what kinds of cinematic investigations does it encourage? This collection features essays by an eclectic, international range of film researchers. Amongst the works analysed are classics such as
The Cameraman (1928),
The Philadelphia Story (1940) and
La Piscine (1969); cult hits such as
The Swimmer (1968) and
Deep End (1970); and more recent representations of the pool in
Water Lilies (2007),
Sea Point Days (2009) and
Ausente (2011). The pool is considered as a realm where artifice meets nature, where public meets private, where sexualities morph and blend; and as a space that reconfigures the relationship between architecture and narrative, in which themes of pollution, spectacle and reflexivity find unique expression. Approaching the swimming pool from a wide range of methodological perspectives, the essays in this collection stake a claim for the enduring significance of this exciting cinematic space.
Table of ContentsContents: Christopher Brown/Pam Hirsch: Introduction: The Cinema of the Swimming Pool – Chris O’Rourke: The Municipal Plunge: Silent Cinema and the Social Life of Swimming Pools – Sheri Chinen Biesen: Cinematic Comedy and the Swimming Pool: Gender, Class, Coming of Age and Sexual Identity from
The Philadelphia Story (1940) to
Legally Blonde (2001) – Alex Naylor: ‘The Anatomy of Atavism’: American Urban Modernity, Gothic Trauma and Haunted Spaces in
Cat People (1942) – Edward Saunders: From Stadium to Street: Generations and Gentrification in Berlin Pool Scenes – Axel Andersson: The Artifice of Modernity: Alienation by the Pool Side in the Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni – Christopher Brown: The Pools of
The Swimmer (1968): Exurbia, Topography, Decay – François Penz: Atmosphère d’
Eau Sauvage: Reflections on
La Piscine (1969) – Pam Hirsch: A Dangerous Age:
Deep End (1970) – Rose Hepworth: Staging Embarrassment in
The Last Picture Show (1971) and
Morvern Callar (2002) – Monika Keska: Filming the Splash: David Hockney’s Swimming Pools on Film – Clara Garavelli: The Swimming Pool as a Site of Subversion during the Spanish Transition: The Case of
Pepito piscina (1978) – Matilda Mroz: The Aesthetics of Overflow: Andrei Tarkovsky’s
Nostalghia (1983) in Duration – Micah Trippe: Urban Guerilla Playfare, or Skating through Empty Cinematic Pools in
Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) – Sophie Mayer:
Gutta cavat lapidem: The Sonorous Politics of Lucrecia Martel’s Swimming Pools – Emma Wilson: ‘The sea nymphs tested this miracle’:
Water Lilies (2007) and the Origin of Coral – Piotr Cieplak: Swimming in Post-apartheid Cape Town:
Sea Point Days (2009) – Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns: Cartographies of Desire: Swimming Pools and the Queer Gaze.
