Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-326) and index.
Contents:
Introduction / Marketa Uhlirova -- Dreams for sale / Esther Leslie -- Part I. Costume brought into focus: from the nineteenth-century stage to early cinema -- Dancing on top of the world: a serpentine through late nineteenth-century entertainment, fashion and film / Catherine Hindson -- Cosmic voyages in advance of cinema: "La Loïe" skirts the universe / Jody Sperling -- The serpentine dance in the cinematograph / Giovanni Lista -- Costume in early 'marvellous' cinema: the aesthetic of opulence and the teasing image / Marketa Uhlirova -- Part II. Performing costume in the silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s -- Engendering Faust: the veiled lady in Nino Oxilia's 'Rapsodia satanica' (1915/17) / Eugenia Paulicelli -- Born fully clothed: the significance of costume for the silent cinema vamp / Inga Fraser -- "Become the thing we look to be": glamorous Gloria in DeMille's jazz age films / Sumiko Higashi -- Poetry in motion: costume, choreography and the showgirl revue in American cinema in the 1920s-40s / Lucy Fischer -- Dance, fashion and music hall scenes in European silent films of the 1920s / Karl Toepfer -- Part III. Fashioning queer underground cinema from the 1940s to the 1970s -- Kenneth Anger: clothing, queerness, magic / Juan A Suárez -- Fashion, thrift stores and the space of pleasure in the 1960s queer underground film / Ronald Gregg -- Dressing pink Narcissus / Ryan Powell.
Summary:
This book zeroes in on three distinct historical episodes in European and American cinema--early "marvelous" film of the turn of the twentieth century, popular exotic spectaculars of the 1910s and 20s and underground queer cinema of the 1960s--in order to examine how and why these often foregrounded dress as the star of the show. Interrogating film against wider cultures of urban popular spectacle and entertainment, especially fashion, dance and the theatre, the contributors to this book explore how dynamic displays of costume have helped visualize certain key concerns of modernity, such as movement, time, transience and gender identity. Above all, the essays highlight the immense transformative potential of costume and fashion, both in the moving image and beyond. The volume is lavishly illustrated with film stills, frame enlargements and other archival material.-- Publisher's description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.