Introduction: the lure of the theatre
1. The backstage movie and the patterns of theatre life
2. Biopics, classic and revisionist
3. All about the actress
4. The uncanny theatre
5. Theatricality and politics
6. Three auteurs and the theatre
Conclusion
Index

All films are about the theatre: there is no other subject,’ wrote Jacques Rivette, pre-eminent filmmaker and theorist of the French New Wave. Theatres on Film is an innovative contribution to the study of both theatre and film history. From the early days of cinema, the relationship between theatre and the cinema has been one of tension in which the need to assert independence is mingled with a degree of respect and anxiety regarding the supposedly superior status of the senior partner.

With its detailed discussion of popular and influential films that have taken the theatre as their subject, informed by a strong sense of the cultural and historical background, The emphasis is on films made after the advent of synchronised sound, which brought to the fore both the attraction’ and threat of the theatre, reflected in the substance as well as the promotion and reception of such films as The Jazz Singer (1927). Rather than attempt a catalogue of survey of the hundreds of films in which theatre appears, Theatres on Film focuses on the significance and effect of theatrical subject matter in key films in several genres, and ranges from Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minelli to Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir, and from the haunted backstage world of The Phantom of the Opera to the sinister glamour of The Red Shoes and the theatrical politics (and politicised theatre) of Mephisto and The Lives of Others.

Theatres on Film will appeal to film- and theatregoers, as well as to readers with an academic or professional interest in its subject.