<Originals>The Emergence of “Runaway Romances” in Postwar Hollywood and David Lean's Summertime (1955) as a Self-Referential Text

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  • <論文>ランナウェイ・ロマンスと、『旅情』(1955年)の自己言及性
  • ランナウェイ・ロマンスと、『旅情』(1955年)の自己言及性
  • ランナウェイ ・ ロマンス ト 、 『 リョジョウ 』(1955ネン)ノ ジコ ゲンキュウセイ

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Abstract

From the late 1940s through the 1950s, the Hollywood film industry saw a sharp decline in cinema theatre attendance. In reaction to this dwindling cinema-going popularity, major Hollywood film studios began to produce films set in Europe featuring tourist attractions, hoping that visual spectacles of exotic lands would bring the audience back to cinemas again. The film scholar Robert Shandley later labeled such tourist-related films in this period as “Runaway Romance.” This study focuses on David Lean's Summertime(1955) as a “Runaway Romance” film and argues that the film is a self-referential critique of the interrelationship between mass tourism and films. The first half of the discussion traces the development of “Runaway Romances” and outlines both narrative and aesthetic patterns of the genre by focusing on Roman Holiday (Director. William Wyler, 1953), whose financial and critical success paved the way for the formation of the genre. Thereafter, it examines how Lean uses a 16 mm camera that Katharine Hepburn operates throughout the film and comments upon the touristic view of the world. Unlike typical runaway production such as Roman Holiday, the film successfully foregrounds the presence of emerging media-driven tourists in contemporary American society.

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