From Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, to sharp-suited gangsters in Tarantino movies, clothing is central to film. In
Undressing Cinema
, Stella Bruzzi explores how far from being mere accessories, clothes are key elements in the construction of cinematic identities, and she proposes new and dynamic links between cinema, fashion and costume history, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis.
Bruzzi uses case studies drawn from contemporary popular cinema to reassess established ideas about costume and fashion in cinema, and to challenge conventional interpretations of how masculinity and femininity are constructed through clothing. Her wide-ranging study encompasses:
* haute couture in film and the rise of the movie fashion designer, from Givenchy to Gaultier
* the eroticism of period costume in films such as
The Piano
and
The Age of Innocence
* clothing the modern
femme fatale
in
Single White Female
,
Disclosure
The Last Seduction
* generic male chic in
Goodfellas
Reservoir Dogs
, and
Leon
* pride, costume and masculinity in ‘Blaxploitation' films,
Boyz ‘N The Hood
New Jack City
* drag and gender confusion in cinema, from the unerotic cross-dressing of
Mrs Doubtfire
to the eroticised ambiguity of
Orlando
.