Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art

✍ Scribed by Keith McDonald; Roger Clark

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 244
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A critical exploration of one of the most exciting, original and influential figures to emerge in contemporary film, Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art is a major contribution to the analysis of Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic output. It offers an in-depth discussion of del Toro’s oeuvre and investigates key ideas, recurrent motifs and subtle links between his movies. The book explores the sources that del Toro draws upon and transforms in the creation of his rich and complex body of work. These include the literary, artistic and cinematic influences on films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, Cronos and Mimic, and the director's engagement with comic book culture in his two Hellboy films, Blade II and Pacific Rim. As well as offering extensive close textual analysis, the authors also consider del Toro’s considerable impact on wider popular culture, including a discussion of his role as producer, ambassador for ‘geek’ culture and figurehead in new international cinema.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The structure of this book
Part One: Contexts and Audiences
1 Influences and Intertexts
Director as film historian
Formations
The big two
In The Spirit of the Beehive
Film-maker as bibliophile
Film-maker as connoisseur: The visual arts
2 Accented Fantasy and the Gothic Perverse
Magical transnationalism
Queer Gothic
3 Fan as Film-maker
Part Two: Texts and Thematics
4 Twisted Genres: Cronos and Mimic
Alchemical beginnings
Do be afraid of the dark
5 Trauma – Childhood – History: The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth
The Lost Boys: The Devil’s Backbone
Ofelia’s adventures underground(s)
6 Gothic Superheroes: Blade II, Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Action vampires
Hellboys and pyrogirls
7 From Development Hell to the Pacific Depths: The Strain and Pacific Rim
In production …
From tombs to tomes
The popcorn perverse
Filmography
Bibliography
Index