Rouben Mamoulian: Reinventing reality--his art and his life.
Item
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Title
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Rouben Mamoulian: Reinventing reality--his art and his life.
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Identifier
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AAI9029981
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identifier
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9029981
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Creator
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Spergel, Mark Jonathan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Glenn M. Loney
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Cinema | Biography
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Abstract
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Theatre and film director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987), is chiefly known as a major technical innovator and stylist. His stage credits include the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), and Lost in the Stars (1949). His sixteen completed films include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Golden Boy (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and Silk Stockings (1957).;In the theatre, Mamoulian is chiefly known for integrating the various contributory arts of the American musical, transforming the near variety-show format of musicals (specialty songs, dances, insignificant plots and characters), into a full-blown Gesamtkunstwerk in which plot, character, music, and dance combine to create a dramatic unity. By doing so, he opened the stage to what would later be termed "the golden age" of the American book musical of the 1950s and '60s.;In early sound films Mamoulian restored mobility to the camera, which had become static, locked into a cumbersome housing. He restored the artistic use of montage, redefined close-ups, split-screen, and dissolves. He was the first film director to use multitrack sound recording and invented the voice-over. Mamoulian directed the first live-action Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935).;This study re-examines Mamoulian's previously unquestioned autobiographical disclosures by introducing heretofore undisclosed personal documents. The central theme that emerges in Mamoulian's art and life, as he describes it--to overcome the world and embrace truth--extends to the telling of his own history, reflecting a belief in the ability to alter that history through stylized presentation. The truth as he, and those he manipulated, presents it reflects an idealization of that history and raises numerous questions about historiography. Insights into historiography unfold by examining the various dialectical relationships between Mamoulian and his artistic creations, the censors, his co-workers, producers, and his audience, in addition to examination of the dialectical nature of the major themes within his work; ones he articulates like that between the animalistic and the spiritual, and ones he does not like that between the public and the private self.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
