Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- Introduction: romantics versus modernists?
- 1 1929: romantics and modernists on the cusp of sound
- 2 The running man: Hitchcock's fugitives and The Bourne Ultimatum
- 3 Running man 2: Carol Reed and his contemporaries
- 4 David Lean: the troubled romantic and the end of empire
- 5 The trauma film from romantic to modern: A Matter of Life and Death to Don't Look Now
- 6 Joseph Losey and Michelangelo Antonioni: the expatriate eye and the parallax view
- 7 Expatriate eye 2: Stanley Kubrick and Jerzy Skolimowski
- 8 Terence Davies and Bill Douglas: the poetics of memory
- 9 Conclusion: into the new century
- Select bibliography
- Index
- EUP JOURNALS ONLINE
2 - The running man: Hitchcock's fugitives and The Bourne Ultimatum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- Introduction: romantics versus modernists?
- 1 1929: romantics and modernists on the cusp of sound
- 2 The running man: Hitchcock's fugitives and The Bourne Ultimatum
- 3 Running man 2: Carol Reed and his contemporaries
- 4 David Lean: the troubled romantic and the end of empire
- 5 The trauma film from romantic to modern: A Matter of Life and Death to Don't Look Now
- 6 Joseph Losey and Michelangelo Antonioni: the expatriate eye and the parallax view
- 7 Expatriate eye 2: Stanley Kubrick and Jerzy Skolimowski
- 8 Terence Davies and Bill Douglas: the poetics of memory
- 9 Conclusion: into the new century
- Select bibliography
- Index
- EUP JOURNALS ONLINE
Summary
In the first chapter we looked at the romantic origins of the fugitive film in A Cottage on Dartmoor. In this chapter we go further and examine its central figure, the ‘running man’ in talking pictures. In this let us go back to front. Where today would we find this fugitive figure? The most common answer, in box-office terms, might well be The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) – American Matt Damon as Jason Bourne in a film most would think American, but is in part British, made with a partly British crew and a Surrey-born director, Paul Greengrass, who sprang to prominence through his drama-documentaries Bloody Sunday and United 93 (on the 9/11 hijacks). The Running Man is also the title of Carol Reed's 1963 feature whose fugitive hero is disappearing conman Laurence Harvey in a film most would rate as one of Reed's weaker films, a pallid echo of The Third Man (1948). It is a term Raymond Durgnat appropriated for his study of fugitive films in A Mirror for England and one recycled in the next two chapters, where it should be noted that memorable acting in the genre also comes from ‘running women’ – Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps, Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes, Alida Valli in The Third Man, Claire Bloom in The Man Between (1953) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965).
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- Information
- Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema , pp. 25 - 43Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010