Tom Brown
My work is invested in combining methodologies derived from film theory, film historiography and the practice of close analysis in innovative ways. I am particularly interested in theories of cinematic narration (agency, rhetoric, self-consciousness etc.), the representation of history (the relationship between film style and ideology) and the theorisation of film spectacle (especially in the genres of the musical and the historical film). I have a broader interest in the relationship between audio-visual technologies and film style. I recently completed a monograph on the role of direct address (fictional characters who acknowledge the audience's 'presence') and am currently working on an edited collection (with Belen Vidal) on the 'biopic' (biographical film) in contemporary international film culture, as well as developing plans for further work on the 'spectacular' in cinema.
Address: Film Studies Department
King's College London
Norfolk Building
Strand Campus
London
WC2R 2LS
Address: Film Studies Department
King's College London
Norfolk Building
Strand Campus
London
WC2R 2LS
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Books by Tom Brown
‘Breaking the Fourth Wall is a probing study of the ways in which an actor or a character in a movie sometimes looks at the camera and addresses us in the audience. This is often taken simply to dispel the illusion, but in his book Tom Brown sensitively examines different forms of direct address and explicates how various and complex its effect can be.’
Gilberto Perez, Sarah Lawrence College
Film characters are not supposed to look at the camera, so what happens when they do acknowledge our ‘presence’ as spectators? It is often assumed that this is incompatible with the ‘voyeurism’ and the ‘presence-absence’ that defines the cinema experience and disrupts our involvement in the fiction. This book revaluates these and other fundamental assumptions about the medium by demonstrating that direct address is compatible with – and is in some cases a convention of – various traditions of filmmaking.
Breaking the Fourth Wall is the first book to provide a broad understanding of the role of direct address within fiction cinema. Chapters on the role of direct address in Hollywood comedies and musicals, as well as in some ‘alternative’ film practices, are accompanied by extended readings of individual films in which the illusion of eye contact between spectator and character offers a rich metaphor for the problems of vision (insight, foresight, other kinds of perceptiveness) that are so often the currency of movie narratives. In examining direct address, it returns the reader to fundamental and foundational debates concerning how cinema has been defined since the early part of the twentieth century, making it an invaluable resource for students and researchers in Film Studies.
The 38 specially commissioned essays in Film Moments examine a wide selection of key scenes across a broad spectrum of national cinemas, historical periods and genres, featuring films by renowned auteurs including Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir and Vincente Minnelli and important contemporary directors such as Pedro Costa, Zhang Ke Jia and Quentin Tarantino, addressing films including City Lights, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Night of the Hunter, Wild Strawberries, 8 1⁄2, Bonnie and Clyde, Star Wars, Conte d'été, United 93 and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Film Moments provides both an enlightening introduction for students to the diversity of approaches and concerns in the study of film, and a dynamic and vibrant account of key film sequences for anyone interested in enhancing their understanding of cinema.
Film and Television After DVD brings together a group of internationally renowned scholars to provide the first focused academic inquiry into this important technology. The book picks up on key issues within contemporary media studies, making a particularly significant contribution to debates about convergence and interactivity in the digital media landscape. Essays consider DVD as a technology that exists outside the boundaries of "new" and "old" media, examining its place within longer histories of home film cultures and production practices of the film and television industries, whilst also critically evaluating what is genuinely "new" about digital media technologies. From DVDs to downloading, peer-to-peer networking and HD-DVD, this book speaks of the rapidly evolving digital mediascape. Ultimately, Film and Television After DVD is a book that considers the convergence of film, television and new media and their academic disciplines through the DVD as a distinct cultural object, pointing to persistent questions in the study of audiovisual culture that will remain intriguing long after the shelf-life of the DVD itself.
Papers by Tom Brown
The example of Gone with the Wind illustrates the interrelationship between these two kinds of spectacle and their associations with particular ideas of femininity and masculinity. This gendering of spectacle is related to ‘the historical gaze’, a performative gesture that exemplifies the wider rhetoric of historical films, in their seeking to address the historical knowledge of the film spectator and to uphold a vision of history as being driven by powerful men, aware of their own destiny. Over the course of the three famous hilltop scenes in Gone with the Wind, one can plot Scarlett O’Hara’s (Vivien Leigh) increased access to this kind of foresight and fortitude coded as ‘masculine’. This character arc can also be traced through Scarlett’s shifting place within the film’s use of spectacle: she begins the film wholly preoccupied with the domestic world of lavish parties and beautiful gowns; however, after her encounter with cataclysmic history visualised as a vast, terrible spectacle (the fall of Atlanta), Scarlett assumes the role occupied by her broken and emasculated father.
This study has drawn directly on seven ‘original’ French films and their ‘Améremakes’: 'La Chienne' (Jean Renoir, 1931) into 'Scarlet Street' (Fritz Lang, 1945), 'L’Equipage' (Anatole Litvak, 1935) into 'The Woman I Love' (Anatole Litvak, 1937) , 'Pépé le Moko' (Julien Duvivier, 1937) into 'Algiers' (John Cromwell, 1938) and 'Casbah' (John Berry, 1948), 'La Bête humaine' (Jean Renoir, 1938) into 'Human Desire' (Fritz Lang, 1954), 'Pièges' (Robert Siodmak, 1939) into 'Lured' (Douglas Sirk, 1947), 'Le Corbeau' (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943) into 'The 13th Letter' (Otto Preminger, 1951) and, finally, 'Le Jour se lève' (Marcel Carné, 1939) into 'The Long Night' (Anatole Litvak, 1947). I discuss films like 'La Chienne'-'Scarlet Street', 'Pépé le Moko' and its remakes far less than 'Le Jour se lève'-'The Long Nigh't and 'Pièges'-'Lured' because the former have had major studies devoted to them, while the latter are little discussed .