Ratcatcher

Add to my list

by Annette Kuhn

Type

Studies

Subject

One Film > Ratcatcher

Keywords

Lynne Ramsay

Publishing date

2020

Publisher

BFI Publishing

Collection

BFI Film Classics

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 96 pages
5 ¼ x 7 ½ inches (13.5 x 19 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83871-948-7

User Ratings

(0 vote)

X

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
Lynne Ramsay's bleak yet beautifully photographed debut unflinchingly portrays life on a Glasgow housing estate during the 1973 refuse collectors' strike, as seen through the eyes of 12-year-old James Gillespie (William Eadie). After James's friend falls into a canal and drowns, James becomes increasingly withdrawn. As bags of rubbish pile up and rats move in, James finds solace in his friendships with Kenny, an odd boy who loves animals, and Margaret Anne,
a teenage misfit.

Annette Kuhn's study of the film, the first to offer an overarching account of Ramsay's work, considers the director's background and Ratcatcher alongside her earlier films. Kuhn traces the film's production history in the context of
Scottish media and literary cultures, and its cinematic influences, while acknowledging the distinctiveness of Ramsay's poetic, visionary style. Kuhn draws on interviews with Ramsay and others involved in the film's production, and combines this with a close reading of selected passages to provide an in-depth and illuminating analysis of the film's poetic style and its aesthetics, including an examination of its construction of a child's world through a highly distinctive organisation of cinematic space.

About the Author:
Annette Kuhn is Emeritus Professor in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Publications include Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination; An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (2002); Little Madnesses: Winnicott, Transitional Phenomena and Cultural Experience (2013); and, with Guy Westwell, Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (2012).

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

See Ratcatcher (1999) on IMDB ...