Blake Edwards Film Director as Multitalented Auteur

Blake Edwards: Film Director as Multitalented Auteur is the first critical analysis to focus on the dramatic works of Blake Edwards. Best known for successful comedies such as The Pink Panther series with Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards wrote, produced, and directed serious works in radio, television, film, and theater for seven decades. Although hit films such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and ‘10’ remain popular, many of Edwards’s dramas have been forgotten or marginalized.

In this unique book, William Luhr and Peter Lehman draw on original research from numerous set visits and personal interviews with Edwards and many of his creative and business collaborators to explore his dramas, radio and television work, theatrical productions, one-man art shows, and unproduced screenplays. In-depth chapters analyze non-comedic films including Experiment in Terror, Days of Wine and Roses, and The Tamarind Seed, the theatrical feature film Gunn and the made-for-television film Peter Gunn, the musical adaptation of Victor/Victoria, and lesser-known films written but not directed by Edwards, such as Drive a Crooked Road.

Throughout the book, the authors apply contemporary film theory to auteur criticism of different works while sharing original insights into how Edwards worked creatively in disparate genres and media using composition, editing, sound, and visual motifs to shape his films and radio and television series.

A one-of-a-kind examination of one of the most influential film directors of his generation, Blake Edwards: Film Director as Multitalented Auteur is an excellent supplementary text for university courses in American cinema, genres, auteurs, and film criticism, and a must-read for critics, scholars, and general readers interested in the works of Blake Edwards.

WILLIAM LUHR is Professor of English and Film at Saint Peter’s University and Co-Chair of the faculty-level Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. His books include Film Noir; Screening Genders and Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, 4th Edition, as well as Blake Edwards and Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards, Volume II. Luhr’s writings have been published widely and he lectures in both national and international venues.

PETER LEHMAN is Professor Emeritus of Film and Media Studies in English at Arizona State University. He is the former President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Founding Editor of Wide Angle. His publications include author of Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body, New Edition and Roy Orbison: The Invention of an Alternative Rock Masculinity and coauthor of Thinking about Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying; Blake Edwards and Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards, Volume II. He is editor of Pornography: Film and Culture and coeditor of The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford’s Classic Western. He has lectured widely nationally and internationally.

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