ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher

by Rhodes, Gary D.; Singer, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781474419031
• ISBN10: 1474419038
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-03-01
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

One of the most important yet overlooked of Hollywood auteurs, Budd Boetticher was responsible for a number of classic films, including his famous 'Ranown' series of westerns starring Randolph Scott. With influential figures like Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood acknowledging Boetticher's influence, and with growing academic interest in his work, Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer present a vital collection of essays on the director's long career, from a range of international scholars. Looking at celebrated films like Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) and Comanche Station (1960), as well as at lesser-known works like Escape in the Fog (1945) and Behind Locked Doors (1948), this book also addresses Boetticher's influential television work on the James Garner series Maverick, and Boetticher's continuing aesthetic influence on contemporary TV classics like Breaking Bad.

Author Biography

Robert Singer is a Professor of Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Gary D. Rhodes, currently serves as Postgraduate Director for Film Studies at the Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section 1 introduction
Chapter 1: "I never did think he was crazy": Mystery and Criminality in Boetticher's Psychological Noirs, by Marlisa Santos
Chapter 2: On ethics and style in Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), by Fredrik Gustafsson
Chapter 3: Domestic Tension and Male Hysteria: The Killer is Loose (1956), by Tony Williams
Chapter 4: The Killer is Loose (1956) and the Televisual Dissolution of Film Noir, by Hugh S. Manon
Chapter 5: Adventures on the Small Screen: Boetticher, Warner Bros., and Maverick, by David J. Hogan
Chapter 6: The Signifying Heel: Boetticher's The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), by Robert Singer

Section 2 introduction
Chapter 7: The Ranown Cycle: Budd Boetticher's "New Look" Western Programmers in 1950s Hollywood, by Zoe Wallin and Karina Aveyard
Chapter 8: Framings, Motifs and Floating Poker Games in Seven Men from Now (1956), by Steve Neale
Chapter 9: The Ranown Style: Mapping Textual Echoes, by Lucy Fife Donaldson
Chapter 10: You Were Married, But You Never Had a Wife: The Use of Space in the Westerns of Budd Boetticher, by Christopher Minz
Chapter 11: Ideology and Boetticher's Westerns from the late 1950s, by John White
Chapter 12: Outlaws Without a Cause: Generational Conflict in Budd Boetticher's Ranown Cycle, by Brooks E. Hefner
Chapter 13: The Box in the Desert: Budd Boetticher, Breaking Bad, and the 21st Century Western, by Robert Guffey

Author Biographies