 | Victorian Vogue: British Novels on Screen Subjects: English fiction -- 19th century -- Film and video adaptations; Motion pictures and literature; Film adaptations -- History and criticism; Ranging from cinematic images of Jane AustenOCOs estates to Oscar WildeOCOs drawing rooms, Dianne F. Sadoff looks at popular heritage films, often featuring Hollywood stars, that have been adapted from nineteenth-century novels. Victorian Vogue argues that heritage films perform different cultural functions at key historical moments in the twentieth century. According to Sadoff, they are characterized by a double historical consciousnessOCoone that is as attentive to the concerns of the time of production as to those of the Victorian period. If James WhaleOCOs Frankenstein and Tod BrowningOCOs Dracula exploited post-Depression fear in the 1930s, the horror films of the 1950s used the genre to explore homosexual panic, 1970s movies elaborated the sexuality only hinted at in the thirties, and films of the 1990s indulged the pleasures of consumption.Taking a broad view of the relationships among film, literature, and current events, Sadoff contrasts films not merely with their nineteenth-century source novels but with crucial historical moments in the twentieth century, showing their cultural use in interpreting the present, not just the past." |
