Perplexing Plots : Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder Hardback
by David (Observations On Film Art) Bordwell
Part of the Film and Culture Series series
Hardback
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Nominated, 2024 Edgar Allan Poe Award in the category of best critical/biographical, Mystery Writers of AmericaShortlisted, 2024 Agatha Awards - Best Mystery Nonfiction, Malice DomesticPosthumous Winner - 2023 IFCA Book Prize, International Crime Fiction AssociationNarrative innovation is typically seen as the domain of the avant-garde.
However, techniques such as nonlinear timelines, multiple points of view, and unreliable narration have long been part of American popular culture.
How did forms and styles once regarded as “difficult” become familiar to audiences?In Perplexing Plots, David Bordwell reveals how crime fiction, plays, and films made unconventional narrative mainstream.
He shows that since the nineteenth century, detective stories and suspense thrillers have allowed ambitious storytellers to experiment with narrative.
Tales of crime and mystery became a training ground where audiences learned to appreciate artifice.
These genres demand a sophisticated awareness of storytelling conventions: they play games with narrative form and toy with audience expectations.
Bordwell examines how writers and directors have pushed, pulled, and collaborated with their audiences to change popular storytelling.
He explores the plot engineering of figures such as Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock, Dorothy Sayers, and Quentin Tarantino, and traces how mainstream storytellers and modernist experimenters influenced one another’s work.
A sweeping, kaleidoscopic account written in a lively, conversational style, Perplexing Plots offers an ambitious new understanding of how movies, literature, theater, and popular culture have evolved over the past century.
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Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:512 pages, 93 b&w film stills
- Publisher:Columbia University Press
- Publication Date:17/01/2023
- Category:
- ISBN:9780231206587
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:512 pages, 93 b&w film stills
- Publisher:Columbia University Press
- Publication Date:17/01/2023
- Category:
- ISBN:9780231206587