Brenda Benthien

Bio: Brenda Benthien is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Film theory & Film genre. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 6 publications receiving 33 citations.

Film essays and criticism

Abstract: This is an English translation of Arnheim's "Kritiken und Aufsatze zum Film", which collects both film reviews and theoretical essays, most of them written between 1925 and 1940. Arnheim began writing about film in the 1920s for a satirical magazine, "Das Stachelschwein" and later became a film critic for "Die Weltbuhne". His most important contributions to both magazines are published here, including comments on the silent and early sound period, incorporating some of Buster Keaton's films. The 30 essays on film theory discuss elements of theory; early sound film; production; style and content; and the relationship of film and the state. The 56 critical pieces include Arnheim's thoughts on the practice of film criticism, his reviews of German, American, French and Soviet films, and his profiles of Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Felix Bressart, Erich von Stroheim, and others.

Castan’s Panopticum: Ein Medium wird besichtigt: ANGELIKA FRIEDERICI, 2020 Berlin, Verlag Karl-Robert Schütze 35 booklets, pp. 702, illus.: single booklet €7.50; complete edition €165.00 (paper)

Abstract: Angelika Friederici is a Berlin-based historian, editor and researcher. Her Castan's Panopticum is a tour de force, a monumental, richly illustrated monograph in 35 booklets that she laboured over ...

Projektionen der Moral: Filmskandale in der Weimarer Republik

Abstract: ‘Projections of Morality’ is part of the series Medien und Gesellschaftswandel im 20. Jahrhundert, which focuses on the contribution of twentieth-century media to social change. Author Kai Nowak, a...

Lichtspiele im Schatten der Armut

Abstract: author eloquently discusses Christie’s activism through her films, her behindthe-scenes interactions and her off-screen activism. Moreover, she persuasively places Christie’s political agency within the context of the actress’s own gendered and sexual politics, as well as that of a popularised feminism more broadly. Within the BFI Film Stars series, Bell’s study sits perhaps most comfortably with the approach adopted by Ginette Vincendeau in Brigitte Bardot (2013), which discusses the creation of Bardot’s on-screen image within a specific genre and her off-screen relationship with the press, thereby employing a range of filmic and non-filmic texts. Bell’s chapter on Christie’s performances also has parallels with Andrew Klevan’s Barbara Stanwyck (2013), which uses textual analysis to investigate Stanwyck’s uniquely recognisable performance skills. Individually these books present interesting case studies of specific stars, but their true academic importance lies in the diverse methods employed by the writers as they investigate their chosen star. Overall, Bell’s thought-provoking study of Christie fits well within both the BFI series, and with film star scholarship more generally, as it both presents a coherent examination of Christie’s star persona and performances, and places her within film history, thereby achieving its main goals.

Zeitbilder. Filme des Nationalsozialismus: Rainer Rother, 2019, Berlin, Bertz + Fischer, pp. 262, illus., €22.00 (paper)

Abstract: Rainer Rother is the director of the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin and head of the Berlinale’s Retrospective section. In addition to curating many film exhibitions, he has authored Leni Riefenstahl...

The Lineaments of Personality: Esquire and the Problem of the Male Consumer

Abstract: Title of Document: THE LINEAMENTS OF PERSONALITY: ESQUIRE AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MALE CONSUMER. Stefan K. Cieply, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Directed By: Professor James B. Gilbert, History The male consumer has proven problematic for historians of consumer culture and gender. By approaching consumption as the expression or by-product of gender identity, historians and other commentators on gender fail to account for consumer culture as an important site where difference is itself constituted through the goods we purchase, the items we desire and the worlds we imagine. To this end, the male consumer becomes problematic when prevailing historiographic models construct him solely as a rational, goal-oriented purchaser of goods or as an amoral libertine who rejects responsibility for fleeting pleasures. Both approaches are untenable since they rely upon a problematic rhetoric of gender essentialism. What I argue for instead is an approach that places consumption within the unsettled discursive practice of gender. In this sense, the problem of the male consumer speaks in part to a larger issue in historiography, namely how we historicize pleasure and desire. My work on Esquire in the period from 1945-1965 attempts to address this gap by examining the role of cultural intermediaries in developing a discourse on socially legitimate forms of consumption. Against the background of the misogynistic “Masculinity Crisis” rhetoric, the postwar mass culture debates and a nascent counterculture, Esquire transformed itself from a crude men’s magazine to one of America’s premier periodicals. Between 1956 and 1963, Esquire published work by such distinguished figures as Richard Rovere, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Dwight Macdonald, Paul Goodman, Diana Trilling, Terry Southern, and Nat Hentoff. During this same period, Esquire also ran monthly fashion spreads, service articles on the newest consumer goods, travel advice columns and an annual Christmas gift guide. Through the figure of the “Uncommon Man,” the name given to the magazine’s imagined reader, and the rhetoric of the “New Sophistication,” Esquire attempted to negotiate the tension inherent in its contradictory parts. Drawing on research in cultural and intellectual history, gender theory, material culture studies and the sociology of culture, my dissertation investigates how Esquire opened a discursive space in which men could simultaneously construct themselves within and outside of consumer culture. THE LINEAMENTS OF PERSONALITY: ESQUIRE AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MALE CONSUMER.

Cinema, Trance and Cybernetics

Abstract: We've all had the experience of watching a film and feeling like we've been in a trance. This book takes that experience seriously, explaining cinema as a cultural technique of trance, one that unconsciously transforms our perceptions. Ute Holl moves from anthropological and experimental cinema through nineteenth-century psychological laboratories, which she shows developed techniques for testing, measuring, and classifying the mind that can be seen as a prehistory of cinema, one that allows us to see the links among cinema, anthropology, psychology, and cybernetics.

Constructing a Cinematic World: The Role of Architecture in Park Chan Wook's Feature Films, 1992-2016

Abstract: Park Chan Wook is one of South Korea’s foremost contemporary film directors. This thesis examines the evolving role of architecture in nine of Park’s feature-length films, beginning with his directorial debut in 1992 with The Moon is…the Sun’s Dream to his most recent work in 2016, The Handmaiden. Through the lens of auteur theory, the thesis draws connections between Park’s personal relationship to architecture and the representation and use of buildings and their spaces in his films. Analyzing the films in chronological order, the thesis documents how Park’s use of architecture changes throughout his oeuvre. The thesis weaves together biographical information and diegetic data to explore how Park’s architectural aesthetic develops throughout his directorial career.