Men's Cinema : Masculinity and Mise-en-Scene in Hollywood

This is a book about one aspect of how cinema makes us feel as well as think. It reflects on how we as spectators are invited to understand, desire or identify with Hollywood's vision of men and masculinity via mise-en-scene.

Men’s Cinema offers a fresh theorisation of men in Hollywood cinema via a theoretical discussion of definitions of masculinity and the close textual analysis of classic and contemporary films. Through an examination of mise-en-scène, Men’s Cinema moves beyond discussions of representation and narrative to an exploration of the physical or instinctive effects of cinema and how we are invited to engage with, desire or identify with Hollywood's vision of men and masculinity. By delineating how Hollywood has built up and refined the language of men's cinema through a series of recurrent, refined tropes, this book critically explores masculinity and the concept of a male aesthetic within film. Films discussed include: The Deer Hunter, Dirty Harry, Goodfellas, Inception, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Once Upon a Time in the West, Point Break, Raging Bull, Rebel Without A Cause, Reservoir Dogs, Sherlock Holmes, There’s Always Tomorrow, The Wild Bunch.