A history of spies on the silver screen, with an emphasis on the stories these films present.
Wesley Britton is the author of Spy Television (Praeger 2004), the first book-length study of espionage television series, and Beyond Bond (Praeger 2005), a similarly groundbreaking treatment of spies in fiction and film. He is also the author of many articles for journals, encyclopedias, and periodicals, as well as of book reviews and poetry.
How well did The Manchurian Candidate describe the fears of the
early 1960s? Who remembers that Buster Keaton's classic The General
was actually a spy yarn? Enthusiast Britton starts his hunt from
the silent film and treads to the films that are likely to come our
way soon, looking at the former as a form of Victorian melodrama
with a rather scattered system of villains and fears and the latter
as what the viewing public assumes about terrorists. Along the way
he examines early civil war flicks and oaters, the aristocratic and
elegant espionage of the 1930s, various narratives of nazis from
the 1930s to 2005, the Bond, et. al. worship of the 1960s and
1970s, and the antiheroes from then to now. A fascinating chapter
details how those who made movies somehow found spies of World War
II and the Cold War hilarious.
*Reference & Research Book News*
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