Known for restoring vitality and superior craftsmanship to the crime thriller, American filmmaker Michael Mann has long been regarded as a talented triple threat capable of moving effortlessly between television and feature films as a writer, director, and executive producer. His unique visual sense and thematic approach are evident in the Emmy Award-winning The Jericho Mile (1979), the cult favorite The Keep (1983), the American epic The Last of the Mohicans (1992), and the Academy Award-nominated The Insider (1999) as well as his most recent works—Ali (2001), Miami Vice (2006), and Public Enemies (2009).
The Philosophy of Michael Mann provides an up-to-date and comprehensive account of the work of this highly accomplished filmmaker, exploring the director’s recognizable visual style and the various on-screen and philosophical elements he has tested in his thirty-five-year career. The essays in this wide-ranging book will appeal to fans of the revolutionary filmmaker and to philosophical scholars interested in the themes and conflicts that drive his movies.
Tabella dei contenuti
Michael Mann and Non-Place: A Nietzschean Element in Mann’s Modern Crime Films
Awakened to Chaos: Outsiders in The Jericho Mile and Thief
Existential Mann
Do You See? Reflecting on Evil in Manhunter
Mann and Ubermensch: Evil and Power in Manhunter
Blood in the Moonlight: Towards an Aesthetics of Horror in The Keep and Manhunter
Style, Meaning, and Myth in Public Enemies
Interiorization in Public Enemies
Mannerism: Neoclassical Style in the Films of Michael Mann
The Ethics of Contracts, Conscience, and Courage in The Insider
Commodification of the Law: The Disembodiment of Justice in the Films of Michael Mann
Subjectivity and the Ethics of Duty in Michael Mann’s Cinema
Natural Man, Natural Rights, and Eros: Conflicting States of Nature and Definitions of Love in The Last of the Mohicans
Emotion, Truth, and Space in Heat
Mann’s Biopics and the Methodology of Philosophy: Ali and The Insider
Circa l’autore
R. Barton Palmer is Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University and the author or editor of several books, including Hollywood’s Tennessee: the Williams Films and Postwar America.