Background
Marcia Landy was born on June 24, 1931 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. She is the daughter of Isidore and Goldie (Baratz) Kanevsky.
Athens, Ohio, United States
In 1953 Marcia Landy received a Bachelor of Arts from the Ohio University.
Rochester, New York, United States
In 1961 Marcia Landy obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University Rochester and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1962.
(Through her study of the narrative themes and strategies ...)
Through her study of the narrative themes and strategies of Italian commercial sound films of the fascist era, Marcia Landy shows that cultural life under fascism was not monopolized by official propaganda.
https://www.amazon.com/Fascism-Film-Commercial-1931-1943-Princeton/dp/0691610908/?tag=2022091-20
1986
(In this unprecedented survey of British cinema from the 1...)
In this unprecedented survey of British cinema from the 1930s to the New Wave of the 1960s, Marcia Landy explores how cinematic representation and social history converge. Landy focuses on the genre film, a product of British mass culture often dismissed by critics as "unrealistic," showing that in England such cinema subtly dramatized unresolved cultural conflicts and was, in fact, more popular than critics have claimed. Her discussion covers hundreds of works--including historical films, films of empire, war films, melodrama, comedy, science-fiction, horror, and social problem films--and reveals their relation to changing attitudes toward class, race, national identity, sexuality, and gender. Landy begins by describing the status and value of genre theory, then provides a history of British film production that illuminates the politics and personalities connected with the major studios. In vivid accounts of the films within each genre, she analyzes styles, codes, and conventions to show how the films negotiate history, fantasy, and lived experience. Throughout Landy creates a dynamic sense of genre and of how the genres shape, not merely reflect, cultural conflicts.
https://www.amazon.com/British-Genres-Society-1930-1960-Princeton/dp/0691637229
1991
(Marcia Landy has gathered thirty-seven important essays o...)
Marcia Landy has gathered thirty-seven important essays on film and melodrama that have appeared in books and journals over the last two decades. In her introduction to the book, Landy explores the recent interest in the genre in relation to theoretical work in psychoanalysis and semiotics, setting the stage for the essays that follow. The book's seven sections examine the history of melodrama, its emphasis on emotional excess, its manicheanism, and its dependence on non-verbal strategies to communicate. Essays focus on the family melodramas of the 1950s, the role of Hollywood directors and stars in the development of the genre, and melodrama in the silent films and on television. The book concludes with an exploration of the use of melodrama in European and Latin American cinema, both silent and sound. Imitations of Life thus provides a variety of perspectives-chronological, theoretical, and international-on the genre while investigating its cultural, social, and political significance.
https://www.amazon.com/Imitations-Life-Television-Contemporary-Approaches/dp/0814320651/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(When Greta Garbo made Queen Christina for MGM in 1933, sh...)
When Greta Garbo made Queen Christina for MGM in 1933, she was at the height of her powers. International stardom had given her unprecedented control over her career. A new contract with the studio assured her consultation on story material and a veto over the directors of her films. The story of Christina, the seventeenth-century queen of Sweden forced to choose between her private and public life, was ideally suited to Garbo's image. Indeed, Christina's eventual abdication was uncannily prophetic of Garbo's sudden withdrawal from the cinema only eight years after this film. The role called for the expression of an intense eroticism, and the mysteriously compelling sexuality continues to fascinate both male and female audiences. Marcia Landy and Amy Villarejo explore this with great subtlety, showing the ways in which power and gender impose contradictory pressures. When Greta Garbo made Queen Christina for MGM in 1933, she was at the height of her powers. International stardom had given her unprecedented control over her career. A new contract with the studio assured her consultation on story material and a veto over the directors of her films. The story of Christina, the seventeenth-century queen of Sweden forced to choose between her private and public life, was ideally suited to Garbo's image. Indeed, Christina's eventual abdication was uncannily prophetic of Garbo's sudden withdrawal from the cinema only eight years after this film. The role called for the expression of an intense eroticism, and the mysteriously compelling sexuality continues to fascinate both male and female audiences. Marcia Landy and Amy Villarejo explore this with great subtlety, showing the ways in which power and gender impose contradictory pressures.
https://www.amazon.com/Queen-Christina-BFI-Film-Classics/dp/0851705235/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(Landy peruses six different moments in the history of cin...)
Landy peruses six different moments in the history of cinema, employing the theories of Nietzsche and Gramsci. Her reading of these films explores their investments in history and memory in relation to ideas of nation, sexuality, gender, and race. Among the films she discusses are A Fistful of Dynamite, The Scarlet Empress, Dance with a Stranger, Holocaust, Schindler's List, Le camp de Thiaroye, Guelwaar, The Leopard, and Veronika Voss. A thoroughly compelling reading of these emblematic films, Cinematic Uses of the Past is also a revealing interpretation of popular history, exposing the fragmentary, tentative, and invested nature of cultural memory.
https://www.amazon.com/Cinematic-Uses-Past-Marcia-Landy/dp/0816628254/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(Marcia Landy’s The Folklore of Consensus examines the the...)
Marcia Landy’s The Folklore of Consensus examines the theatricality in the Italian popular cinema of the 1930s and early 1940s, arguing that theatricality was a form of politics ― a politics of style. While film critics no longer regard the commercial films of the era as mere propaganda, they continue to regard the cinema under fascism as "escapist," diverting audiences from the harsh realities of life under fascism. The Folklore of Consensus problematizes the notion of "escapism," examining the complexity that redeems the films from frivolity and evasion. It shifts the focus from a preoccupation with cinema as the public and spectacular purveyor of "fascinating fascism" to a more immediate and intimate terrain that bears on formulations about the role of mass culture then and now.
https://www.amazon.com/Folklore-Consensus-Theatricality-1930-1943-Cultural/dp/0791438031/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(Italian Film examines the extraordinary cinematic traditi...)
Italian Film examines the extraordinary cinematic tradition of Italy, from the silent era to the present. Analyzing film within the framework of Italy's historical, social, political, and cultural evolution during the twentieth century, Marcia Landy traces the construction of a coherent national cinema and its changes over time. Her study traces how social institutions — school, family, the Church — as well as Italian notions of masculinity and femininity are dealt with in cinema and how they are central to the conceptions (and misconceptions) of national identity.
https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Film-National-Traditions/dp/0521649773/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(The book brings together representative examples of how b...)
The book brings together representative examples of how both media critics and historians write about history as it is created and disseminated through film and television. The essays explore what is at stake culturally and politically in media history and how this form of history-making is different from traditional historiography. The volume is divided into four parts — Regarding History; History as Trauma; History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory; and History and Television — that progressively deepen our understanding of just how complex the issues are. Essays by top scholars analyze many different kinds of film: historical film, documentary, costume drama, and heritage films. The section on television is equally broad, examining phenomena as diverse as news broadcasts and Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.
https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Film-History-Memory-Rutgers-ebook/dp/B000RMT8Q8/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(Despite claims about the end of history and the death of ...)
Despite claims about the end of history and the death of cinema, visual media continue to contribute to our understanding of history and history-making. In this book, Marcia Landy argues that rethinking history and memory must take into account shifting conceptions of visual and aural technologies. With the assistance of thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Cinema and Counter-History examines writings and films that challenge prevailing notions of history in order to explore the philosophic, aesthetic, and political stakes of activating the past. Marshaling evidence across European, African, and Asian cinema, Landy engages in a counter-historical project that calls into question the certainty of visual representations and unmoors notions of a history firmly anchored in truth.
https://www.amazon.com/Cinema-Counter-History-Marcia-Landy-ebook/dp/B00UWJ4J60/?tag=2022091-20
2015
Marcia Landy was born on June 24, 1931 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. She is the daughter of Isidore and Goldie (Baratz) Kanevsky.
In 1953 Marcia Landy received a Bachelor of Arts from the Ohio University. In 1961 she obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University Rochester and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1962.
From 1962 to 1967 Marcia Landy served as an assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester. She began as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and became professor of English and film studies in 1967.
(Through her study of the narrative themes and strategies ...)
1986(Marcia Landy’s The Folklore of Consensus examines the the...)
1998(The book brings together representative examples of how b...)
2000(In this unprecedented survey of British cinema from the 1...)
1991(Despite claims about the end of history and the death of ...)
2015(Marcia Landy has gathered thirty-seven important essays o...)
1991(Landy peruses six different moments in the history of cin...)
1997(Italian Film examines the extraordinary cinematic traditi...)
2000(When Greta Garbo made Queen Christina for MGM in 1933, sh...)
1996Marcia Landy is a member of the Modern Language Association of America, of the Society for Cinema Studies, of the American Association of Insurance Services.
On June 24, 1953 Marcia Kanevsky married Alvin Landy and have two children: Hilary Joyce, Anne Rebecca. In 1971 they divorced.