ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges

Jeff Jaeckle is the editor of Film Dialogue (Wallflower Press, 2013) and co-editor (with Sarah Kozloff) of ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges (EUP, 2015). His scholarship on language in cinema, aesthetics and Hollywood film has also appeared in Film Quarterly, New Review of Film and Television Studies and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He holds a doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin and teaches at Portland Community College. Sarah Kozloff is Professor of Film on the William R. Kenan Jr. Chair, Vassar College

• Introduction: An Agile Mind: The Many Stands of Preston Sturges, Jeff JaeckleContexts: Genre, Studio, AuthorshipPreston Sturges and Screwball Comedy, Leger GrindonPreston Sturges, Sullivan’s Travels, and Film Authorship in Hollywood, 1941, Virginia Wright WexmanTo Write and Not Direct, Sarah Kozloff“The Edge of Unacceptability”: Preston Sturges and the PCA, Matthew BernsteinCultural Commentary: History and IdentitySturges’s Many Mothers, Kristine Karnick“These Are Troublous Times”: Social Class in the Comedies of Preston Sturges, Christopher Beach“They Always Get the Best of You Somehow”: Preston Sturges in Black and White, Krin GabbardFalling Hard: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Joe McElhaneyTechnique: Scripting, Performance, MusicThe Unheard Song of Joy, Jeff JaeckleThe Eye of the Storm: Preston Sturges and Performance, Diane CarsonPresto(n) con Spirito: Comedies with Music, Sturges-Style, Martin MarksImpact: Reception/ReputationThrust with a Rapier and Run: The Critics and Preston Sturges, G. Tom PoeHail the Conquering Auteur: Preston Sturges in La Revue du cinéma (1946-1949), Christian VivianiO Preston, Where Art Thou?, Sarah Kozloff

This book brings American cinema’s most idiosyncratic, prodigious comic genius into deep focus for 21st century readers. Hail the conquering editors Kozloff and Jaeckle, who have coaxed newly researched essays to converse with one another, writing in effervescent language worthy of the Master himself.'