Crooked, but Never Common : : The Films of Preston Sturges / / Stuart Klawans.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Klawans, Stuart,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 40 b&w film stills

In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948—The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek among them—all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day. Yet despite this acclaim, Sturges’s achievements remain underappreciated: he is too often categorized as a dialogue writer and plot engineer more than a director, or belittled as an irresponsible spinner of laughs.In Crooked, but Never Common, Stuart Klawans combines a critic’s insight and a fan’s enthusiasm to offer deeper ways to think about and enjoy Sturges’s work. He provides an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director’s major movies, presenting Sturges as a filmmaker whose work balanced slapstick and social critique, American and European traditions, and cynicism and affection for his characters. Tugging at loose threads—discontinuities, puzzles, and allusions that have dangled in plain sight—and putting the films into a broader cultural context, Klawans reveals structures, motives, and meanings underlying the uproarious pleasures of Sturges’s movies. In this new light, Sturges emerges at last as one of the truly great filmmakers—and funnier than ever.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Instead of an Introduction -- 1 Ya Can’t Get Away from Arithmetic -- 2 He Thinks He Has Ideas -- 3 I’m Not a Poet, I’m an Ophiologist -- 4 As You Are, So Shall You Remain -- 5 Topic A -- 6 Homo Sapiens, the Wise Guy -- 7 Psycholology -- 8 That’s All You Know How to Hurt -- 9 You Arouse the Artist in Me -- 10 Every Emotion Was Exaggerated -- Instead of a Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index