Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle

This book, edited by Marketa Uhlirova, zeroes in on three distinct historical ‘episodes’ in European and American cinema – early ‘marvellous’ film of the turn of the twentieth century, popular exotic spectaculars of the 1910s and ’20s, and underground queer cinema with its core activity in the 1960s – in order to examine how and why these often foregrounded dress as the star of the show.

Interrogating film against wider cultures of urban popular spectacle and entertainment, especially fashion, dance and the theatre, the contributors to this book explore how dynamic displays of costume have helped visualise certain key concerns of modernity, such as movement, time, transience and gender identity. Above all, the essays highlight the immense transformative potential of costume and fashion, both in the moving image and beyond.

Uhlirova’s introduction argues that poetic sensibilities are not confined to the avant-gardes alone but extend to popular cinema. The contributors use costume as a prism through which to re-examine existing histories of cinema, attempting to make sense of how and why costume constitutes a cinematic spectacle in particular film forms and genres, including wider cultures of visual pleasure outside of cinema: popular theatre, modern dance, fashion and orientalism.

The volume is illustrated with film stills, frame enlargements and other archival material.

The text of Uhlirova's introduction to this book is restricted because of the publishers' copyright policy. Please contact UAL Research Online to request a copy.