Books in the Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television series

Styles of filmmaking have changed greatly from classical Hollywood through to our digital era. So, too, have the ways in which film critics and scholars have analysed these transformations in film style. This book explores two central style concepts, mise en scene and dispositif, to illuminate a wide range of film and new media examples.

We are so used to images of words that it is easy to ignore the different ways in which they work in films. This book explores both the letters that come in the post and the many other kinds that are offered to us on screen.

Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives of art, literature and music, Donaldson develops a stimulating understanding of a concept that has received little detailed attention in relation to film. Based in close analysis, Texture in Film brings discussion of style and affect together in a selection of case studies drawn from American cinema.

This pioneering book provides detailed analysis of scenes from nine British television dramas produced between 1954 and 2001. Taking dinner table scenes as a recurring motif, the study analyses changes in televisual style with reference to production practices, technology, aesthetic preferences, and social and institutional change.

An ambitious interpretation of the critically celebrated and widely popular crime drama Breaking Bad , this book argues that not only should the series be understood as a show that revolves around the dramatic stakes of dignity, but that to do so reveals - in new ways - central aspects of serial television drama as an art form.

This book puts forward a more considered perspective on 3D, which is often seen as a distracting gimmick at odds with artful cinematic storytelling. It demonstrates that the expressive placement of characters and objects within 3D film worlds can construct meaning in ways that are unavailable to `flat' cinema.

This book examines the concept of coherence in film studies. The author then proceeds to a close analysis of stylistically perplexing narrative films, in order to demonstrate how we can broaden, expand and readjust the classical criteria of coherence.

This book provides an in-depth study of Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, Kim Novak and Meryl Streep, and the treatment of adultery in their films. The periods discussed cover Davis's work in 1937 to 1943, Fontaine's work between 1939 and 1950, Novak in 1954 to 1964, and finally Streep's work between 1979 and 1985.