Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Late Keaton, Docufiction, the Nouvelle Vague 2. Self-Perception and Asynchronous Sound: Godard, Hitchcock, Resnais 3. ‘texte théâtre film’: Auteurism, Meyerhold/Eisenstein, Duras 4. Photogénie, the Close-Up, Gender Performance Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

Draws on archival material - including writings on artists such as Eisenstein, Godard and Chaplin - to explore the influence of cinema on Beckett's work.

About the Author

Anthony Paraskeva is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Roehampton University, UK. He is the author of The Speech-Gesture Complex: Modernism, Theatre, Cinema.

Reviews

By examining a vast array of early European films that Beckett is known to have seen from the 1930s onward, Paraskeva makes even Beckett’s latest and shortest works shine with newly found intertextual brilliance … a truly remarkable contribution to Beckett Studies— especially in Paraskeva’s intrepid research through loads of European films.
*James Joyce Literary Supplement*

Paraskeva draws on a rich archive of existing scholarship in his book … Close analysis of Beckett's growing familiarity with the technologies, techniques and institutions of screen media helps it to make what may be the most detailed case yet for Beckett the serious cineaste.
*Times Literary Supplement*

Paraskeva successfully realizes the goal of exploring the various influences of first and second wave modernist cinema on Beckett’s work and directing practice. Through his thorough, incisive, and engaging analysis and methodical comparison, Paraskeva provides us with a great read not only of Beckett’s oeuvre but also of the other examples present in his research, and his diligently researched book should be considered necessary reading for anyone wishing to study Beckett’s work for film and television.
*Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature*

A very solid and interesting addition to Beckett scholarship in an area that has been mostly overlooked.
*Modern Language Review*

There is ... a wealth of imaginative commentary here that makes for some productive and revealing scholarship.
*Journal of British Cinema and Television*

Paraskeva’s book succeeds in providing a fascinating account of Beckett’s awareness of modernist film techniques and showing how he adopted them in his stage plays and teleplays. This monograph is clearly the product of a passion for modernist film culture, a thoughtful engagement with Beckett criticism, and a careful examination of Beckett drama in relation to film techniques.
*Journal of Modern Literature*

A fascinating and impeccably researched study of the impact of first and second wave cinema on Beckett’s writing and direction… [The book] allows the reader to completely reevaluate film history stratigraphically and non-chronologically through Beckett ... A must-read.
*Modernism/Modernity*

The sheer amount of material on offer in Samuel Beckett and Cinema, as well as the numerous connections drawn between Beckett’s works and cinematic history, will ensure that any future studies on this subject will do well to begin here.
*Modernist Cultures*