Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A welcome attempt to bring several mighty British films of the 1940s into contemporary relevance. Seizing on the eccentricity of three wartime movies-The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp, Henry V, and Brief Encounter-Puckett discloses the contrariety and oddity structuring these films' responses to war with an extraordinary intensity of focus." -- -Alexander Nemerov Stanford University "Seemingly as quirky in focus as are the eccentricities of British character 'strategically' enshrined in the three wartime classics under scrutiny, Puckett's cultural inquiry is carried deep into what war can picture back to a society in crisis about its values and compromises. Across and beyond genres, with the apparatus of 'projection' (every sense) explored as one armature of resistance, Puckett takes us to places in the viewing experience rarely probed by screen analysis. Though he recognizes his work as film writing more than traditional film studies, in the long run his immersive approach delivers film thinking at its most challenging. In its canny battle against the predictable, War Pictures is a winning achievement." -- -Garrett Stewart author of Closed Circuits: Screening Narrative Surveillance "War Pictures is an eloquent and absorbing study of some of the best known British movies of the Second World War. Describing a whole range of ways in which a work of film art can be about war, the readings are always stylish and often surprising-and Kent Puckett's Celia Johnson is completely unforgettable." -- -Marina Mackay St. Peter's College
Table of ContentsPreface Introduction "But what is it about?": The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Pistol's Two Bodies; or, Henry V at War Celia Johnson's Face: Before and After Brief Encounter England's Dreaming: Derek Jarman's War Notes Works Cited Index
