Julie Christie - (Film Stars) by Melanie Bell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Julie Christie's prickly relationship with stardom is legendary. This fascinating text provides a comprehensive account of Christie's career, from her emergence in the 1960s to present day. It moves from analysing her star persona, to exploring her performance and her politics, and in doing so raises important questions for the film industry.

From the Back Cover

Julie Christie is one of cinema's most enigmatic stars. Her early Oscar-winning success as the free-spirited heroine in Darling (1965) was followed by roles in a number of landmark films from cinema's leading auteurs. Although she increasingly shunned the media spotlight in favour of political causes, Christie has remained a star revered by fellow actors and feted by critics and audiences alike.

In this original and revealing study, film scholar Melanie Bell analyses Christie's work in key films, from Doctor Zhivago (1965), to Don't Look Now (1973), The Gold Diggers (1983) and Away from Her (2006), demonstrating how the actress developed a poetic and ironic performance style that enabled her to shift convincingly between mainstream and art-house cinema.

Drawing on a range of archival materials, Bell reveals for the first time the extent of Christie's creative involvement in the production process and her support for feminist film-makers and feminist politics. Restoring Christie to her rightful place in
film history, this absorbing text addresses important questions about how women's creative contributions to cinema are recognised, rewarded and archived.

About the Author

Melanie Bell is Associate Professor in Film and Media at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the author of Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema (2009) and co-editor of British Women's Cinema (2009).