The first in-depth study of its subject, this book seeks to historically account for a type of modernist film that revolves around bereavement. Identifying the roots of the genre in classical melodrama and horror cinema, and tracing perennial themes and aesthetic devices through to the European and American intellectual melodramas of the postwar decades, the book provides a taxonomy of characteristics. In the course of detailed case studies, the book deploys the film theory of Gilles Deleuze and Daniel Frampton while making use of Freudian psychoanalysis and present-day grief counselling...

In a world, in which camcorders and CCTV are witness to our every move and Big Brother and The Blair Witch Project are phenomenally popular and widely imitated, the divide between reality and liction has become increasingly blurred.