1st Edition
Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema
This volume offers a unique exploration of how ageing masculinities are constructed and represented in contemporary international cinema.
With chapters spanning a range of national cinemas, the primarily European focus of the book is juxtaposed with analysis of the social and cultural constructions of manhood and the "anti-ageing" impulses of male stardom in contemporary Hollywood. These themes are inflected in different ways throughout the volume, from considering how old age is not the monolithic and unified life stage with which it is often framed, to exploring issues of queerness, sexuality, and asexuality, as well as themes such as national cinema and dementia.
Offering a diverse and multifaceted portrait of ageing and masculinity in contemporary cinema, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film and screen studies, gender and masculinity studies, and cultural gerontology.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
1. Introduction: Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary European and Anglophone Cinema
Tony Tracy and Michaela Schrage-Früh
2. The Ageing of Men on Film: Concepts and Perspectives
Michael Kimmel
3. “Using the Difficulty”: Michael Caine as Ageing Rebel
Robert Shail
4. “A Porcelain Feeling”: Performance and Ageing in the Very Late Films of John Gielgud
Jonathan Stubbs
5. Ageing Disgracefully: Depardieu, Hallyday, Luchini, and Silver Linings in Recent French Cinema
Phil Powrie
6. Jean Rochefort as Ageing Star: Masculinity and Masquerade
Philip Dine
7. From Mustang to 2CV: Ageing in Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme Trilogy
Éamon Ó Cofaigh
8. Ageing Male Melodrama and Post-Soviet Generational Conflict in Contemporary Estonian Cinema
Teet Teinemaa
9. Restitution and Ageing Masculinities in Post-1989 Czech Cinema
Matthew Sweney
10. The (Im-)Possibility of Solidarity: Narratives of Ageing, Masculinity, and Intergenerational Relationships in the German Comedies We Are the New Ones (2014) and Granny Nanny (2020)
Lisa-Nike Bühring
11. Ageing, Masculinity, and the Absurd in Toni Erdmann (2016)
Michael Stewart
12. “What Makes Us Alive”: The Ageing Artist in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015)
Manuel Barberá
13. Masculinity, Creativity, and Successful Ageing in Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019)
Heather Jerónimo
14. Ageing Myths and Dark Romanticism in Albert Serra’s Story of My Death (2013)
Esther Zaplana
15. Male Ageing and Retribution in Contemporary Action Thrillers
Thomas Britt
16. De-ageing and Denying the "Older Man" in Recent Hollywood
Timothy Shary
17. Our Fathers: Ageing Masculinities and Dementia in Contemporary Film
Tony Tracy
Index
Biography
Tony Tracy is Lecturer in Film and Media Studies and Co-founder of the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, University of Galway, Ireland. His research centres on film history and Irish cinema with a particular interest in masculinities. His monograph White Cottage, White House: Irish American Masculinities in Classical Hollywood Cinema was published in 2022.
Michaela Schrage-Früh is Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature at the University of Galway, Ireland. She is the author of Emerging Identities: Myth, Nation and Gender in the Poetry of Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Medbh McGuckian (2004) and Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination (2016). She has published widely on representations of gender and ageing in literature and culture, and is co-editor of five essay collections on the theme.
