1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821339403321

Autore

Andriopoulos Stefan

Titolo

Possessed : hypnotic crimes, corporate fiction, and the invention of cinema / / Stefan Andriopoulos ; translated by Peter Jansen and Stefan Andriopoulos

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2008

ISBN

1-281-95903-0

9786611959036

0-226-02057-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (217 p.)

Collana

Cinema and modernity

Disciplina

791.43/6556

Soggetti

Hypnotism in motion pictures

Hypnotism in literature

Hypnotism and crime

Corporations - Corrupt practices

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Translated from the German.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes filmography: p. [163]-170.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-202) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- I. TALES OF HYPNOTIC CRIME -- II. INVISIBLE CORPORATE BODIES -- III. STAGING THE HYPNOTIC CRIME -- IV. BERNHEIM, CALIGARI, MABUSE: CINEMA AND HYPNOTISM -- V. HUMAN AND CORPORATE BODIES IN BROCH AND KAFKA -- EPILOGUE -- APPENDIX A. FILMOGRAPHY -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Silent cinema and contemporaneous literature explored themes of mesmerism, possession, and the ominous agency of corporate bodies that subsumed individual identities. At the same time, critics accused film itself of exerting a hypnotic influence over spellbound audiences. Stefan Andriopoulos shows that all this anxiety over being governed by an outside force was no marginal oddity, but rather a pervasive concern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.            Tracing this preoccupation through the period's films-as well as its legal, medical, and literary te