Full Description
This volume offers a unique exploration of how ageing masculinities are constructed and represented in contemporary international cinema.
With chapters spanning a range of national cinemas, the primarily European focus of the book is juxtaposed with analysis of the social and cultural constructions of manhood and the "anti-ageing" impulses of male stardom in contemporary Hollywood. These themes are inflected in different ways throughout the volume, from considering how old age is not the monolithic and unified life stage with which it is often framed, to exploring issues of queerness, sexuality, and asexuality, as well as themes such as national cinema and dementia.
Offering a diverse and multifaceted portrait of ageing and masculinity in contemporary cinema, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film and screen studies, gender and masculinity studies, and cultural gerontology.
Contents
Acknowledgements; List of Figures; Notes on Contributors; 1. Introduction: Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema; 2. The Ageing of Men on Film: Concepts and Perspectives; 3. "Using the Difficulty": Michael Caine as Ageing Rebel; 4. "A Porcelain Feeling": Performance and Ageing in the Very Late Films of John Gielgud; 5. Ageing Disgracefully: Depardieu, Hallyday, Luchini, and Silver Linings in Recent French Cinema; 6. Jean Rochefort as Ageing Star: Masculinity and Masquerade; 7. From Mustang to 2CV: Ageing in Claude Lelouch's Un homme et une femme Trilogy; 8. Ageing Male Melodrama and Post-Soviet Generational Conflict in Contemporary Estonian Cinema; 9. Restitution and Ageing Masculinities in Post-1989 Czech Cinema; 10. The (Im-)Possibility of Solidarity: Narratives of Ageing, Masculinity, and Intergenerational Relationships in the German Comedies We Are the New Ones (2014) and Granny Nanny (2020); 11. Ageing, Masculinity, and the Absurd in Toni Erdmann (2016); 12. "What Makes Us Alive": The Ageing Artist in Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015); 13. Masculinity, Creativity, and Successful Ageing in Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (2019); 14. Ageing Myths and Dark Romanticism in Albert Serra's Story of My Death (2013); 15. Male Ageing and Retribution in Contemporary Action Thrillers 16. De-ageing and Denying the "Older Man" in Recent Hollywood; 17. Our Fathers: Ageing Masculinities and Dementia in Contemporary Film; Index
