ABSTRACT

This book examines the ways in which the house appears in films and the modes by which it moves beyond being merely a backdrop for action. Specifically, it explores the ways that domestic spaces carry inherent connotations that filmmakers exploit to enhance meanings and pleasures within film. Rather than simply examining the representation of the house as national symbol, auteur trait, or in terms of genre, contributors study various rooms in the domestic sphere from an assortment of time periods and from a diversity of national cinemas—from interior spaces in ancient Rome to the Chinese kitchen, from the animated house to the metaphor of the armchair in film noir.

chapter 1|13 pages

Carl's Moving Castle

“Animated” Houses and the Renovation of Play in Up (2009)

chapter 2|13 pages

Peas, Parsnips, and Patriotism

Images of the Garden in the Second World War

chapter 3|15 pages

“King for a Day”

Performance and Expression in the Cinematic Space of the Basement

chapter 4|11 pages

Kim in the Sitting Room

The Function of Domestic Space in the Construction of Star Image

chapter 5|11 pages

At Home with the Caesars

The Emperor Tiberius and the Ambiguity of Place in Historical and Epic Films

chapter 6|11 pages

The Dining Room

Authenticity, Immersion, and Reproduction?

chapter 7|13 pages

A Drama of Solitude

The Library as Cocoon in Luchino Visconti's Conversation Piece

chapter 8|14 pages

Reframing the Material and Imaginative Geographies of the Home

Chinese Filmmaker Liu Jiayin's [刘伽茵] Oxhide II [牛皮二] (2009)

chapter 9|17 pages

Furnishing the Living Room in Film Noir

Disillusion and the Armchair

chapter 11|15 pages

Intimate Spaces, Extimate Subjects

The Bedroom in Horror Films

chapter 12|13 pages

A Room Going Spare

Lodgers, Nannies, and Strangers in the House

chapter 13|14 pages

Monstrous Men and Bathroom Mirrors

The Bathroom as Revelatory Space in American Cinema

chapter 14|15 pages

Secrets, Memory, and Imagination

Psychic Space and the Cinematic Attic