Books in the Stage & Screen Studies series

This book is an analysis and study of postmodernism, political theatre, and the politics of representation. Traversing a wide span of twentieth-century political theatre and performance practices in the West, the author analyses and questions the performance practices of the historical and neo-avant-gardes, modernist political theatre, and postmodern performance in order to explore the relationships between politics, performance and postmodernism. Chinna contends that it is the provisional and contingent strategies of performance which set the model for the postmodern. Drawing on the poststructuralist theories of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jacques Derrida, among others, the postmodern is defined as a performance model ¿ like deconstruction, endlessly deferring unequivocal meaning and final closure. It is argued that historical avant-garde performance practices such as Dada, as well as the neo-avant-gardes from the 1950s onward, were always trapped within a dialectic of representation and the ¿real¿ in their quest for a merging of art and life.

The private detective novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane have provided the source for some of Hollywood¿s most successful, controversial and baffling films. Spanning almost the whole of the studio era, the private eye mini-genre boasted stars like William Powell, Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell, as well as top-calibre directors John Huston, Edward Dmytryk and Robert Aldrich. Yet the movies themselves still manage to remain something of an enigma: MGM¿s influential adaptation of Hammett¿s The Thin Man has been all but ignored by critics and historians, while classic entries such as The Maltese Falcon and Murder, My Sweet are usually considered only within the wider context of film noir. This book provides a new perspective on the private eye mini-genre of the studio area. Drawing extensively on archival material, Hollywood Through Private Eyes links the private eye screen adaptation to its novelistic source, charting the journey from page to screen and exploring the key influences along the way.