Love in the Afterlife

Underground Religion at the Movies

Richard Striner

This is a definitive study of films that have been built around the themes of love, death, and the afterlife—films about lovers who meet again (and love again) in heaven, via reincarnation, or through other kinds of after-death encounters. Far more than books about mere ghosts in the movies or religion in movies, Love in the Afterlife presents a complex but highly distinctive and unique pattern—the love-death-afterlife pattern—as it was handed down by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks (in the Isis and Orpheus myths, for example), developed by Freud and his followers in the duality of “Eros and Thanatos,” and then featured in popular movies from the 1920s to the recent past. Among its other qualities, Love in the Afterlife may encourage readers to look at movies differently and reflect upon the possibility that other patterns in cinema may have gone undetected for years. Furthermore, this book will show how the love-death-afterlife theme found its way into all sorts of different film types: melodramas, comedies, war films, horror films, film noir, and other genres. The book will be well illustrated and quotations from film reviews will enliven its pages. A long appendix gives production data on almost sixty individual films.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61147-884-6 • Hardback • April 2016 • $97.00 • (£75.00)

978-1-61147-885-3 • eBook • April 2016 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / General, Social Science / Death & Dying

Love in the Afterlife

Underground Religion at the Movies

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This is a definitive study of films that have been built around the themes of love, death, and the afterlife—films about lovers who meet again (and love again) in heaven, via reincarnation, or through other kinds of after-death encounters. Far more than books about mere ghosts in the movies or religion in movies, Love in the Afterlife presents a complex but highly distinctive and unique pattern—the love-death-afterlife pattern—as it was handed down by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks (in the Isis and Orpheus myths, for example), developed by Freud and his followers in the duality of “Eros and Thanatos,” and then featured in popular movies from the 1920s to the recent past. Among its other qualities, Love in the Afterlife may encourage readers to look at movies differently and reflect upon the possibility that other patterns in cinema may have gone undetected for years. Furthermore, this book will show how the love-death-afterlife theme found its way into all sorts of different film types: melodramas, comedies, war films, horror films, film noir, and other genres. The book will be well illustrated and quotations from film reviews will enliven its pages. A long appendix gives production data on almost sixty individual films.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61147-884-6 • Hardback • April 2016 • $97.00 • (£75.00)

978-1-61147-885-3 • eBook • April 2016 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / General, Social Science / Death & Dying

Author

Richard Striner is professor of history at Washington College.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Philosophic and Literary Sources
Chapter 2: The Cultural Milieu after World War I and the Seminal Plays
Chapter 3: The “Mythical Method” as Applied to the Plot Template of Supernatural Romance
Chapter 4: Berkeley Square and the Philosophic Problem of Time
Chapter 5: The “Second Wave” of Plays and the Milieu of the Second World War
Chapter 6: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and the Applications of Theology in Supernatural Romance
Chapter 7: The Tradition Evolves
Conclusion: Underground Religion
Appendix One: Case Study: The Making of What Dreams May Come
Appendix Two: Other Patters in Film that Justify Additional Study
Appendix Three: Production Data for Supernatural Romances and Related Films
Select Bibliography
About the Author

Love in the Afterlife

Underground Religion at the Movies

Richard Striner

Love in the Afterlife

Underground Religion at the Movies

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