Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, Marilyn Monroe was an actress, singer, and sex symbol whose influence far outlasted her short life. Contributors to Fan Phenomena: Marilyn Monroe situate the platinum blonde starlet’s omnipresent cultural relevance within the zeitgeist of current popular culture and explore the influence she has had on numerous elements of it. Her aesthetics and images have been reappropriated, recreated, imitated, and emulated by such celebrities as Lindsay Lohan, Jayne Mansfield, Drew Barrymore, Anna Nicole Smith, and Madonna. The quintessential American sex symbol, Monroe was an influential style icon for a spectrum of designers, including Dolce and Gabbana, Betsey Johnson, and Nike, all of whom have named lines of clothing, shoes, or accessories after the star.

The essays here explore representations of Monroe in visual culture by looking at the ways she is reimagined in visual art while also considering how her posthumous appearance and image are appropriated in current advertisements. With an inside look at the universe of Marilyn Monroe impersonators and look-alike contests for both males and females, the book also explores numerous homages to Monroe in music, from the 1979 opera Marilyn by Lorenzo Ferrero to Nicki Minaj’s song “Marilyn Monroe.” The definitive guide to one of the most famous women who ever lived, the book will be essential reading for any scholar of twentieth-century American popular culture.

Founded by the Puritans in 1630 and the site of many of the American Revolution's major precursors and events (including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s midnight ride, among others), Boston has played—and continues to play—an influential role in the shaping of the historic, intellectual, cultural, and political landscapes of the United States. And Boston has a significantly rich tradition of cinematic representation. While Harvard is central to many of the films set in the Greater Boston area, World Film Locations: Boston considers the full spectrum of Boston’s abundant aesthetic potential, reviewing films located within as well as far beyond Harvard’s hallowed halls and ivy-covered gates.

Many iconic American classics, blockbusters, romantic comedies, and legal thrillers, as well as films examining Boston’s criminal underside, particularly in juxtaposition to the city’s elitist high society, were filmed on location in the city’s streets and back lots. World Film Locations: Boston looks in depth into a highly select group of forty-six films such as Love Story, Good Will Hunting, The Friends of Eddy Coyle, and The Social Network, among many others, presented at the intersection of critical analysis and stunning visual critique (with material from the films themselves as well as photographs of the contemporary city locations). Featuring articles and film scene reviews written by a variety of leading contemporary film writers, critics, and scholars, this book is a multimedia resource that will find a welcome audience in movie lovers in Beantown and beyond.

Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers—and starry-eyed lovers—each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators, and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there. 

            A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas’s appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect’sWorld Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films—from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans 11 to acclaimed classics Rain Man,Casino, and The Godfather to cult favorites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas, the cinematized Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction, and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today.

            World Film Locations: Las Vegas goes beyond the clichés of Sin City to examine what Hal Rothman and Mike Davis called “the grit beneath the glitter,” thus providing an opportunity to find out more about the unique position Vegas occupies in the popular imagination.

As France’s oldest city, Marseilles has a significant cinematic culture, dating back to the 1890s when the Lumière brothers shot many films there. Due to its prolific film industry in the 1920s, Marseilles was referred to as “the French Los Angeles.”

World Film Locations: Marseilles examines the representations of this port city in cinema, through essays and film scene reviews devoted to an exploration of its topography as depicted by Jean Epstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean Renoir, Jean-Jacques Beineix, and many others. This volume showcases Marseilles’s diversity as articulated onscreen: from the winding streets of the Panier to the Old Port’s noisy markets, from the bustling Canebière to the dockyards of the Grand Port Maritime, from the cliffs of Provençal encircling the city to sun-drenched calanques leading to the dazzling cerulean sea. World Film Locations: Marseilles features maps of film scenes, high-quality screengrabs, and images of movie locations as they appear today, accompanied by original texts penned by leading international film scholars and critics and an interview with Marseillais director Robert Guédiguian. Marseilles has been named a 2013–14 European Capital of Culture and this book is a fitting and timely tribute.

“We’ll always have Paris,” Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart’s character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye. The backdrop against which they first fell in love, Paris later serves as a reminder of their deep mutual longings. And with a host of different realizations by filmmakers from Philip Kaufman to Julien Leclercq to Woody Allen, there is no question that Paris has likewise endured in the memories of cinephiles worldwide.

 

World Film Locations: Paris takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the City of Lights past and present through the many films that have been set there. Along the way, we revisit iconic tourist sites from the Eiffel Tower—whose stairs and crossbars inspired more than one famous chase scene—to the Moulin Rouge overlooking the famously seedy Place Pigalle. Other films explore lesser-known quartiers usually tucked away from the tourist’s admiring gaze. Handsomely illustrated with full-color film stills and contemporary photographs, more than fifty scenes are individually considered with special attention to their use of Paris’s topography as it intersects with characters, narrative, and plot. A host of important genres and cinematic movements are featured, including poetic realism, the New Wave, cinéma-verité, the literary works of the Left Bank Group, and Luc Besson’s slickly stylized cinéma du look. Meanwhile, essays foreground contributions from Francophone African directors and émigré filmmakers.

 

For centuries, Paris has reigned over the popular imagination. For those who have visited or those who have only imagined it through art, literature, and film, World Film Locations: Paris presents a wonder-filled cinematic exploration of the mythical city that fans of French cinema—and new initiates—will appreciate.

Prague, the “Hollywood of the East,” has played an important role in the history of cinema and World Film Locations: Prague traverses the city’s topography to examine an internationally diverse range of movies made in the Czech capital: landmark early films such as Ecstasy, controversial due to the female nudity that catapulted Hedy Lamarr into stardom in the United States; Steven Soderbergh’s biopic Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons; adaptations of Kafka’s literary works such as The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starring Anthony Hopkins; and action blockbusters like Mission Impossible, The Bourne Identity, and Casino Royale. Exploring legendary Prague landmarks as they appear onscreen—including the Charles Bridge, Old Town, Malá Strana, Liechtenstein Palace, Wenceslas Square, and Prague Castle—the book also discusses the intersection of the capital city and its cinematic representations; Prague and the Czech New Wave; the iconic Barrandov Studios; and the impact of political events such as the Prague Spring, the Soviet Invasion of 1968, and the Velvet Revolution on the city’s film industry. 

An invaluable resource for scholars, students, and aficionados of film and cinematic psychogeography, this collection will be heralded by students of East European literary, cultural, and sociopolitical history.