Hugo Ríos-Cordero

In 1942, in the midst of the German Occupation of France, Henri-George Clouzot adapted L’Assasin habite au 21 to the screen. In this piece, the mechanism of the detective story is used to create an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion that anticipates his masterpiece Le Corbeau. However, the film is also coated in a thick layer of comedy that disrupts the central theme. Surprisingly, six years later, the Argentinian director Carlo Hugo Christensen adapted the same source novel with similar results. In this paper, I will set out to identify the stylistic choices of both directors and how, not only their aesthetic concerns but also the political environment that surrounded the films, influence their outcome in cinema history.

In terms of Cuban Cinema, “The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin” could be consider the standard bearer of the political zeitgeist of the Cuban Revolution. However, being a comedy in a field dominated by political dramas has obscured its place.
“The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin” embraces the cinematic tenets of the revolution by unfolding a strong critique of Hollywood, patriarchy, and American Imperialism. To achieve this Julio Garcia Espinosa repurposes many of Hollywood’s significant clichés overturns them to expose their mechanisms.  My goal is to unpack the strategies used by Garcia Espinosa in order to restore “The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin” to the top of the Cuban and International film canon.

European horror took an interesting turn in Italy during the 70’s with the rise of Giallo, a combination of crime, gore and eroticism. While some critics agree that it was a short-lived mode (1970-1975) other see it merging and mutating well into the 2010s. Directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forlani reconfigure the same intensity and color palette of traditional Giallo but filtering them through new contemporary aesthetic choices. This paper looks at the aestheticization of violence in Amer and The Strange Color of your Body’s Tears. My argument consists on how questioning how effectively these Franco-Belgian productions are able to navigate the tension prevalent in the juxtaposition of the generic violence of the 70’s Giallo with contemporary views of violence and sexuality.

In this dissertation I investigate the role played by cinephilia both as a moving historical force behind film reviewing and as the engine behind several contemporary developments in the way we think and write about cinema. To do so, in the first chapter I evaluate the major attempts to theorize cinephilia and identify certain defining trends. In the second chapter, I examine the output of film reviewers in the United States with the premise that their work is evidence of the practical workings of cinephilia. In order to broaden the traditional focus on Anglo-European contexts, in the third chapter I study cinephilic film reviewing in Cuba, where social consciousness sometimes emerges with greater force. Finally, in the fourth chapter I survey the latest stage in the development of cinephilia, in which savvy film reviewing melds with technological developments. I conclude that the DVD, digital paratexts, and the blogosphere have dramatically changed both the face and reach of film studies.