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ReFocus: The American Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Delmer Daves

Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Patrick Nelson

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£105.00

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About this book

New essays on the life and work of veteran Hollywood filmmaker Delmer Daves

From Destination Tokyo (1943) to The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), Delmer Daves was responsible for a unique body of work, but few filmmakers have been as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature. Often regarded as an embodiment of the self-effacing craftsmanship of classical and post-War Hollywood, films such as Broken Arrow (1950) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957) reveal a filmmaker concerned with style as much as sociocultural significance. As the first comprehensive study of Daves’s career, this collection of essays seeks to deepen our understanding of his work, and also to problematize existing conceptions of him as a competent, conventional and even naïve studio man.

Key Features
  • The first and only detailed study of this important American screenwriter, producer and director
  • An international collection of original essays examining Daves’s films, including Broken Arrow, 3:10 to Yuma, Task Force and Spencer’s Mountain
Contributors
  • Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
  • Matthew Carter, Manchester Metropolitan University
  • Adrian Danks, RMIT University
  • Andrew Howe, La Sierra University
  • Józef Jaskulski, University of Warsaw
  • Sue Matheson, University College of the North in Manitoba
  • Andrew Patrick Nelson, Montana State University
  • Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhampton
  • Joseph Pomp, Harvard University
  • John White, Anglia Ruskin University

Reviews

The American director Delmer Daves has never enjoyed the critical attention lavished on other Hollywood professionals such as Don Siegel. Finally, however, in this collection of insightful new essays on the life and work of the veteran Hollywood filmmaker, he is granted his critical due. This collection of pieces (covering the director’s entire career, including his shamelessly enjoyable ‘women’s pictures’ such as A Summer Place and Parrish) aims to enrich both our appreciation of the director’s work and changing perceptions of him as simple studio craftsman… the perceptive and provocative case studies of such film as Broken Arrow (1950), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and Destination Tokyo (1943) produce much fascinating analysis here.'
Table of contents
Introduction: No One Would Know It Was Mine: Delmer Daves, Modest Auteur; Chapter One: Don’t Be Too Quick to Dismiss Them: Authorship and the Westerns of Delmer Daves, Andrew Patrick Nelson; Chapter Two: Trying to Ameliorate the Within: Delmer Daves’s Westerns from the 1950s, John White; Chapter Three: Bent, or Lifted Out By Its Roots: Daves’ Broken Arrow and Drum Beat as Narratives of Conditional Sympathy, Józef Jaskulski; Chapter Four: This Room is My Castle of Quiet: The Collaborations of Delmer Daves and Glenn Ford, Adrian Danks; Chapter Five: Delmar Daves, Authenticity, and Auteur Elements: Celebrating the Ordinary in Cowboy , Sue Matheson; Chapter Six: Home and the Range : Spencer’s Mountain as Revisionist Family Melodrama, Joseph Pomp; Chapter Seven: Delmer Daves’ 3:10 to Yuma: Aesthetics, Reception and Cultural Significance, Fran Pheasant-Kelly; Chapter Eight: Changing Societies: The Red House, The Hanging Tree, Spencer's Mountain and Postwar America, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns; Chapter Nine: Partial Rehabilitation: Task Force and the Case of Billy Mitchell, Andrew Howe; Chapter Ten: “This is where he brought me: 10,000 acres of nothing!” The Femme Fatale and other Film Noir Tropes in Delmer Daves’ Jubal, Matthew Carter
About the contributors

Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter is Senior Lecturer in Film, Television, and Cultural Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Andrew Patrick Nelson

Andrew Patrick Nelson is Assistant Professor of Film History and Critical Studies at Montana State University.

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