Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle - Marketa Uhlirova, Lucy Fisher, Inga Fraser & Ronald Gregg

This book explores cinema costume as a form of opulent visual spectacle. It focuses on dozens of lavishly styled films made during three distinct historical ‘episodes’ in European and American cinema – early film of the turn of the 20th century, popular exotic spectaculars of the 1910s and ’20s, and underground queer cinema with its core activity in the 1960s – in order to examine how and why they often foregrounded dress as the star of the show. Looking at the medium of film in parallel with wider cultures of urban popular spectacle and entertainment, especially fashion, dance and the theatre, the contributors to this book explore how dynamic displays of costume and splendour have helped visualise certain key concerns of modernity, such as movement, time, transience and gender identity. Above all, the essays highlight the immense transformative potential of costume and fashion in the moving image and beyond. The volume is illustrated with over 300 film stills, frame enlargements and other archival images.

Recipient of The Most Beautiful Swiss Books of 2014 Award. 

Walther König, 2014
Hardcover, 341pp
281 x 215mm