When New German cinema directors like R. W. Fassbinder, Ulrike Ottinger, and Werner Schroeter explored issues of identity--national, political, personal, and sexual--music and film style played crucial roles. Most studies of the celebrated film movement, however, have sidestepped the role of music, a curious oversight given its importance to German culture and nation formation. Caryl Flinn's study reverses this trend, identifying styles of historical remembrance in which music participates. Flinn concentrates on those styles that urge listeners to interact with difference--including that...

Music and Cinema brings together leading scholars from musicology, music theory, film studies, and cultural studies to explore the importance of music in the cinematic construction of ideologies. The 15 essays include "Songlines: Alternative Journeys in Contemporary European Cinema" by Wendy Everett; "Strategies of Remembrance: Music and History in the New German Cinema" by Caryl Flinn; "Designing Women: Art Deco, the Musical, and the Female Body" by Lucy Fischer; "Kansas City Dreamin' Robert Altman's Jazz History Lesson" by Krin Gabbard; "Disciplining Josephine Baker: Gender, Race, and the...

Broadway star Ethel Merman's voice was a mesmerizing force and her vitality was legendary, yet the popular perception of La Merm as the irrepressible wonder falls far short of all that she was and all that she meant to Americans over so many decades. This marvelously detailed biography is the first to tell the full story of how the stenographer from Queens, New York, became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age. Mining official and unofficial sources, including interviews with Merman's family and her personal scrapbooks, Caryl Flinn unearths new details of Merman's life and...