George Cukor

Presents a critical analysis of the films and career of George Cukor. Though many of his films are celebrated as classics, Cukor has yet to receive his proper due from academic critics. The film maker's interest in the various forms of indoor cinema lacked the generic focus of Ford's westerns and Hitchcock's thrillers, which were championed by the Cahiers critics in the 1950s. His style was theatricality writ large, a successful transference to the screen of what he had learned from his stage career, including the outsized, often flamboyant handling of emotionality. Ultimately, Cukor was much more than a man of the theatre who happened to spend most of his career making films. With ten original essays by leading film scholars, this volume celebrates Cukor's filmmaking career and supplies a hitherto missing chapter in the history of classic Hollywood. One of the first scholarly books to critical evaluate the work of George Cukor; Covers his work in theatre and his early films as well as his later work and emphasis on Cukor and performance.