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JeanAnn Dabb
From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema
Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli. London: I.B. Taurus, 2003. 240 pages. $65, hardcover; $24.50, paper.
Part of the ???Cinema and Society??? series, this excellent volume examines the postmodern, post communist city as a theme in recent European films. Clearly stated in the introduction, the intent is not to redress the absence of previous focus on the subject of the city but to ???draw attention to some examples of this work and to some of the principal images that shape it??? (3). While the authors acknowledge that the physical city is certainly a factor of the rendering, it is the characters' experiences of the city that prove more essential to the analyses of the films they chose for this study.
The book is organized as three parts (Old Europe, Postcommunist Europe, and Case Study: Great Britain) divided into ten chapters. Each chapter addresses at least several films and the authors also, establish for certain cities, Berlin and Marseilles for instance, their cinematic depictions that precede the decades represented in this study. The authors present a well-selected group of films and deliver on their objective to provide accomplished analysis of films as they generously cite or reference the work of other scholars plus introduce their own interpretations. These readings are grounded in postmodern theory as the authors intend to transcend modernist theories, such as the utopia/dystopia dichotomy, which they claim still dominate research on European film. While the authors provide their own useful definition and historical summary of ???postmodern cinema??? their study makes no claims to explore wider issues but instead remains grounded on the principal objectiveof examining how, in a select group of European films of the 1980s and 1990s, the rendering of the urban environment reflects the upheavals in European economy, politics, and society.
In chapter 1, ???From the USA to Europe: Development of a New City,??? the authors define some of the features of a postmodern city-cosmopolitan, fragmented-that are common to European conurbations while they...