Film History & Criticism
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Overview
30 b&w illus.Citizen Kane's unchallenged reputation as one of the greatest films in all cinema is matched only by the accumulation of critical commentary that surrounds it. What more can there be to say about a masterpiece so universally acknowledged? As Laura Mulvey shows in a fresh and original reading, the richness of the film, both thematically and stylistically, is inexhaustible. In a lucid and perceptive critique she investigates the psychoanalytic structure that underlines the film's presentation of Kane's biography, for once taking seriously what Orson Welles himself disparagingly referred to as "dollar-book Freud." She also illuminates the film's historical context, revealing it to be a prescient commentary on the isolationist politics of prewar America.
Author Biography: Laura Mulvey is Postgraduate Programme Coordinator at the BFI. She is the author of Visual and Other Pleasures and Fetishism and Curiosity (BFI, 1996) and has directed films in collaboration with Peter Wollen.
Book Details
Published
September 4, 2012
Publisher
BFI Publishing
Pages
104
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9781844574971