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1 Action and Adventure Cinema 1 1 Action has established itself as one of the leading genres of contemporary Hollywood cinema, generating extensive critical debate in the process. This exciting collection addresses action and adventure from the silent era to the present day, exploring 1 diverse questions of aesthetics, industry and ideology. Contributors consider how action might best be defined, how it has developed historically, and how it works formally. The critical reception and standing of action and adventure cinema is considered in relation to questions of national culture, violence and the ‘art’ of cinema. Themes explored include genre and definitions; early action, sensation and melo- drama; authorship; national and transnational action-adventure traditions; action aesthetics; spectacle and narrative; stars and bodies; class; gender, and race and ethnicity. Individual chapters discuss action cinema from early melodrama and serials such as The Hazards of Helen through classic films of the 1960s including 1 Bullitt, The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen up to contemporary blockbusters Die Hard, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The book considers the action genre outside Hollywood, in Greece, Italy and Japan, and also views action and adventure cinema through the work of individual directors including D.W. Griffith, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah and Kathryn Bigelow. Essays by: Richard Abel, Jennifer M. Bean, Mary Beltrán, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Martin Flanagan, Martin Fradley, Barry Keith Grant, Michael Hammond, Christine Holmlund, Leon Hunt, Mark Jancovich, Susan Jeffords, Peter Krämer, Steve Neale, Marc O’Day, Lydia Papadimitriou, Stephen Prince, Tico Romao, Ben Singer, Yvonne 1 Tasker, Linda Ruth Williams, Rachel Williams, Tony Williams, Aylish Wood. Yvonne Tasker teaches Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is the author of Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (Routledge, 1998) and Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (Routledge, 1993). 1 Action and Adventure 1 Cinema Edited by 1 Yvonne Tasker 1 1 1 First published 2004 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Selection and editorial material © 2004 Yvonne Tasker Individual chapters © individual contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Action and adventure cinema/edited by Yvonne Tasker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Adventure films – History and criticsim. I. Tasker, Yvonne, 1964– PN1995.9.A3A28 2004 791.43′655 – dc22 2004001612 ISBN 0-203-64515-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-67261-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–23506–5 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–23507–3 (pbk) FIGHTING FILMS v 1 Contents 1 1 List of illustrations viii Notes on contributors ix 1 Acknowledgements xiv Yvonne Tasker INTRODUCTION: ACTION AND ADVENTURE CINEMA 1 PART I History, criticism and style 15 1 1 Jennifer M. Bean ‘TRAUMA THRILLS’: NOTES ON EARLY ACTION CINEMA 17 2 Richard Abel THE ‘CULTURE WAR’ OF SENSATIONAL MELODRAMA, 1910–14 31 3 Ben Singer ‘CHILD OF COMMERCE! BASTARD OF ART!’: EARLY FILM MELODRAMA 52 1 4 Steve Neale ACTION-ADVENTURE AS HOLLYWOOD GENRE 71 5 Mark Jancovich DWIGHT MACDONALD AND THE HISTORICAL EPIC 84 vi CONTENTS PART II Theorising action aesthetics 101 6 Martin Flanagan ‘GET READY FOR RUSH HOUR’: THE CHRONOTOPE IN ACTION 103 7 Aylish Wood THE COLLAPSE OF REALITY AND ILLUSION IN THE MATRIX 119 8 Tico Romao GUNS AND GAS: INVESTIGATING THE 1970S CAR CHASE FILM 130 9 Michael Hammond SAVING PRIVATE RYAN’S ‘SPECIAL AFFECT’ 153 PART III Gender, stars, bodies 167 10 Linda Ruth Williams READY FOR ACTION: G.I. JANE, DEMI MOORE’S BODY AND THE FEMALE COMBAT MOVIE 169 11 Mary Beltrán MÁS MACHA: THE NEW LATINA ACTION HERO 186 12 Marc O’Day BEAUTY IN MOTION: GENDER, SPECTACLE AND ACTION BABE CINEMA 201 13 Susan Jeffords BREAKDOWN: WHITE MASCULINITY, CLASS, AND US ACTION- ADVENTURE FILMS 219 14 Martin Fradley MAXIMUS MELODRAMATICUS: MASCULINITY, MASOCHISM AND WHITE MALE PARANOIA IN CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD CINEMA 235 15 Yvonne Tasker THE FAMILY IN ACTION 252 CONTENTS vii 1 PART IV Nation, ethnicity and stardom 267 16 Leon Hunt THE HONG KONG/HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION: STARDOM AND SPECTACLE IN TRANSNATIONAL ACTION CINEMA 269 17 Christine Holmlund EUROPEANS IN ACTION! 284 1 18 Lydia Papadimitriou GREEK WAR FILM AS MELODRAMA: WOMEN, FEMALE STARS, AND THE NATION AS VICTIM 297 1 19 Dimitris Eleftheriotis SPAGHETTI WESTERN, GENRE CRITICISM AND NATIONAL CINEMA: RE-DEFINING THE FRAME OF REFERENCE 309 1 PART V Action, authorship and industry 329 20 Stephen Prince GENRE AND VIOLENCE IN THE WORK OF KUROSAWA AND PECKINPAH 331 21 Tony Williams THE DIRTY DOZEN: THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF SCREEN 1 VIOLENCE 345 22 Peter Krämer ‘IT’S AIMED AT KIDS – THE KID IN EVERYBODY’: GEORGE LUCAS, STAR WARS AND CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINMENT 358 23 Barry Keith Grant MAN’S FAVOURITE SPORT?: THE ACTION FILMS OF KATHRYN BIGELOW 371 1 24 Rachel Williams ‘THEY CALL ME “ACTION WOMAN”’: THE MARKETING OF MIMI LEDER AS A NEW CONCEPT IN THE HIGH CONCEPT ‘ACTION’ FILM 385 Index 398 Illustrations 2.1 Poster for Pathé-Frères, Nuit de Noël (Christmas Eve Tragedy)34 2.2 New York Motion Picture, War on the Plains 38 2.3 ‘The Auto Cracksman Loots – Sometimes Slays – and Is Off Like a Flash’, New York Tribune 40 2.4 Gaumont ad., Moving Picture World 41 2.5 Colonial Theatre ad., Cleveland Leader 43 2.6 Selig ad., Moving Picture World 45 8.1 Stage mounted action: rear screen projection in Bonnie and Clyde 133 8.2–8.4 Camera set up and the reinforcement of character placement in Bullitt 135 8.5 Steve McQueen as stunt driver in Bullitt 136 8.6–8.7 Facial recognition and character placement in Bullitt 137 8.8 Narration and suspense: concealment of vehicle in The Seven-Ups 144 8.9 Narration and suspense: narrational perspective in The Seven-Ups 145 8.10 The slow motion insert and the spectacularization of the stunt in Smokey and the Bandit 147 8.11 Facial expression and character centered functions of POV shots in The French Connection 148 11.1 Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez in Anaconda 191 11.2 Michelle Rodriguez and Jaime Tirelli in Girlfight 194 12.1 Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 213 19.1 The opening shot of Ringo and His Golden Pistol 315 19.2–19.3 Shots from the opening sequence of Ringo and His Golden Pistol 316–19 19.4 Shots from the opening sequence of Django the Bastard 322–3 1 Notes on contributors 1 1 Richard Abel is Robert Altman Collegiate Professor of Film Studies in the Film and Video Studies Program at the University of Michigan. His essays have appeared 1 in dozens of journals and been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. His books include: French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915–1929 (Princeton University Press, 1984); French Film Theory and Criticism, 1907– 1939: A History/Anthology, in two volumes (Princeton University Press, 1988); The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914 (University of California Press, 1994); Silent Film (Rutgers University Press, 1996); and The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 (University of California Press, 1999). Recently, with Rick Altman, he edited The Sounds of Early Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2001); currently, he is editing the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema 1 (forthcoming from Routledge) and completing The ‘Imagined Community’ of US Cinema, 1910–1914 (forthcoming from the University of California Press). His next project is a study of the ‘courtship and marriage’ of two ephemeral discourses in the US: newspapers and moving pictures, 1910–15. Jennifer M. Bean is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington–Seattle. She is co-editor of A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Duke University Press, 2002), and of a special issue of Camera Obscura on ‘Early Women Stars’. She is currently completing a book titled Bodies at Play: Gender, Genre, and the Cinema of Modernity (Duke University Press). 1 Mary Beltrán is Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Chicana/o Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is currently working on a book- length project, Bronze Seduction, on the marketing, aesthetics, and racial politics of Latina stars in Hollywood and American popular culture since the silent film era. She has also written and presented on such topics as Latino/a and mixed-race x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS representation in action cinema, ethnicity in entertainment television, ethnic media advocacy, and beauty and body ideals in US popular culture. Dimitris Eleftheriotis is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies and Director of the Centre for Screen Studies at the University of Glasgow. His publications include the forthcoming Asian Cinemas: A Guide and Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2005) and Popular Cinemas of Europe: Studies of Texts, Contexts and Frameworks (Continuum International, 2001). He is a regular contributor to Screen and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal.

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