UNDRESSING CINEMA - CLOTHING AND IDENTITIES IN THE MOVIES

From Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, to sharp suited gangsters in Tarantine movies, clothing is central to film. Clothes are not mere accessories, but are key elements in the construction of cinematic identities. Undressing Cinema focuses on the narrative significance of clothes in file, and proposes new and synamic links between cinema, fashion and costume history, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis. Undressing Cinema explores the difference between the referential relationship of film and fashion, and the notion that clothing, in such films as The Piano and The Age of Innocence , can be a represive or expressive statement of sexuality. Discussing new film noir, the gangster movie and New Black Cinema, Bruzzi analyses assumptions about femininity and masculinity and examines the relationship between gender and dress in recent cinema: the emergence of the modern femme-fatale in Basic Instinct, Disclosure and The Last Seduction ; generic male chic in Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, Nikitaand Leon ; and pride, costume and masculinity in Malcolm X, Boyz 'N The Hood and The New Jack City.