Film England, 1990-2008: (Trans)National Cinema, English Literature and Narratives of the Past and Present

这个项目考察了自1990年以来制作的英格兰和英格兰风格的电影表现形式。当代电影很少尊重国界，无论是在制作、发行还是接受层面。关于英格兰和英国化的电影可以在外国制作，也可以由外国电影制片人制作，或者由外国资本制作。然而，国家电影的概念仍然流行--尽管批评性的辩论通常指的是英国电影，而不是英国电影，而英国和其他母国的电影官方机构是英国电影委员会。从历史上看，英格兰和英国也曾在不同的时间以不同的方式为同一领土命名。该项目采用了文化史的视角，借鉴了对一系列英语电影和其他电影的制作、发行、营销、展览、票房表现和评论接受的研究。我还对这些电影进行了主题、风格和意识形态的分析。该项目对我以前工作中形成的想法、论点和历史进行了扩展，包括关于国家电影概念、遗产电影和最近英国/英国电影的出版物。该项目有三条线索。第一章考察了国家电影的概念，因为它与当代英国电影有关。我在这里探讨的问题是：地方、国家和全球之间的关系，以及在批评性辩论中出现的“跨国”和“后国家”电影的概念；最近的英国电影(特别是理查德·柯蒂斯的作品“诺丁山”、“真爱至上”)中民族共同体意识的表达；电影景观和建筑中的英国化肖像；以及最近的“后国家”电影(如古林德·查达的作品“像贝克汉姆一样弯曲”、“新娘与偏见”)挑战和重新塑造传统期望的方式。我还对过去二十年来最重要的英国制作公司Working Title进行了一个案例研究，利用工业和文化方面的考虑来解决使用“英国电影”这个概念的困难。该项目的第二部分考察了英国电影和英国文学之间的关系，从散文小说改编成电影，自觉的电影文学的写作，以及文学在关于电影、文化能力和品味的辩论中所扮演的角色。这篇文章中的三个案例分别着眼于简·奥斯汀改编的电影，以及相关的电影，如传记电影《成为简》；近几十年出版的民粹主义和经典英语小说的改编；以及从《劝导》到《恋爱中的莎士比亚》到《时时刻刻》等电影评论中使用的识字电影的批评概念。该项目的第三部分考察了过去的不同电影版本如何构建不同的英格兰愿景和英国身份，并满足不同的受众。我超越了我之前关于遗产电影的工作，通过考虑历史史诗，前现代时期的代表，以及最近的发展。我把那些关于现代(1800年后)更为“优雅”和“文明”的过去的电影，与那些关于中世纪和早期现代时期肮脏、危险和遥远的过去的电影进行了对比。我对比了大预算、史诗般的遥远过去的版本(例如《亚瑟王》)，旨在迎合年轻男性，以更亲密的古装剧突出浪漫小说的乐趣(例如《薰衣草中的淑女》)，以女性观众为设计目标。我还探讨了传统英格兰更多风景如画的愿景如何受到肮脏的现实主义的挑战，这种肮脏的现实主义既影响着奥斯汀的世界，也影响着中世纪或工业时代的英格兰/英国。我在海伦娜·邦汉姆·卡特、凯拉·奈特利等人的作品中，对传统电影的小众明星地位和表演模式进行了案例研究，探讨了类似的紧张关系。

This project examines filmic representations of England and Englishness produced since 1990. Contemporary cinema rarely respects national boundaries, whether at the level of production, distribution or reception. Films about England and Englishness may be made in a foreign country, or by foreign filmmakers, or with foreign capital. Yet the concept of national cinema still has currency - although critical debate usually refers to British, not English, cinema, while the official body for cinema in England and the other home nations is the UK Film Council. Historically too, England and Britain have named the same territory at different times and in different ways. The project adopts the perspectives of cultural history, drawing on research on the production, distribution, marketing, exhibition, box-office performance and critical reception of a range of 'English' and other films. I also undertake thematic, stylistic and ideological analyses of those films. The project expands on ideas, arguments and histories developed in my previous work, including publications on the concept of national cinema, on heritage film and on recent British/English cinema. The project has three strands. The first examines the idea of national cinema as it relates to English cinema in the contemporary period. The issues I explore here are: the relationship between the local, the national and the global, and the emergence of the concepts of 'transnational' and 'post-national' cinema in critical debate; the articulation of a sense of national community in recent English films (especially the work of Richard Curtis [''Notting Hill', 'Love Actually']); iconographies of Englishness in the landscape and architecture of films; and the ways in which recent 'post-national' films (such as the work of Gurinder Chadha ['Bend It Like Beckham', 'Bride and Prejudice') challenge and re-work traditional expectations. I also develop a case study of the most important English production company of the last two decades, Working Title, using industrial and cultural concerns to address the difficulty of using the concept 'a British film'.The second strand of the project examines the relationship between English cinema and English literature, in terms of the adaptation of prose fiction to film, the writing of self-consciously cinematic literature, and the role that the literary plays in debates about film, cultural competence and taste. The three case studies in this strand look respectively at Jane Austen adaptations, and related films such as the bio-pic 'Becoming Jane'; the adaptation of English novels, both populist and canonical, published in recent decades; and the critical concept of the 'literate film' as it has been wielded in reviews of films, from 'Persuasion' to 'Shakespeare in Love' to 'The Hours' and beyond. The third strand of the project examines the ways in which different filmic versions of the past construct different visions of England and English identity, and address different audiences. I move beyond my previous work on heritage films by considering historical epics, the representation of pre-modern periods, and recent developments. I contrast films about the more 'refined' and 'civilized' modern (post-1800) past with films about the dirty, dangerous and distant past of the medieval and early modern periods. I contrast big-budget, epic versions of the distant past (e.g. 'King Arthur'), designed to address young males, with more intimate costume dramas that foreground the pleasures of romance fiction (e.g. 'Ladies in Lavender'), designed with female spectators in mind. And I explore the ways in which more picturesque visions of heritage England are challenged by a dirty realism that infects the world of Austen as much as medieval or industrial England/Britain. I explore similar tensions in a case study of heritage cinema's niche stardom and modes of performance, in the work of Helena Bonham Carter, Keira Knightly and others.