Essays · Historical & Epic · War
Manning Up on the North Shore: American Masculinity and the Early Surf Movies
. . . or how the first surf films helped American men get over the war and change their act * * * In the 1950s and early ’60s, a[…]
Author: John Engle
John Engle is a Maître de conférences, or associate professor, at the Department of Anglo-American Literature and Civilization at the Université du Sud Toulon-Var. A UCLA PhD and fourth-generation Southern Californian who has lived in France for more than thirty years, he has written and spoken on an eclectic range of subjects, including modern poetry, the history of education, intercultural communication and study abroad, Bruce Springsteen, Horatio Alger, and the Irish composer Seán O Riada. In 2003 he edited a special issue of Twentieth Century Literature on "American Writers and France." In addition to his contributions to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has recently written on film adaptations of Jane Eyre and the meaning of cinematic time travel to the Middle Ages. He is the author of the acclaimed book Surfing in the Movies: A Critical History.
Happy 100th, Bobby Bumps, Surf Rider!
While it’s always difficult to make such a claim with assurance – for decades Disney’s 1937 Goofy feature Hawaiian Holiday was confidently thought to hold that honor – Bobby Bumps[…]
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August and Everything After: A Half-Century of Surfing in Cinema
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Indeterminate Position: Kechiche, Tragicomedy, and La Graine et le Mulet
“If Kechiche treats political tragedy, then, it is first by creating abundantly detailed, richly convincing comédie humaine, and nowhere is this more apparent than in what is justly considered his major achievement, La Graine et le Mulet.”
Culture and the Individual Talent: Three Filmmakers on Male Mid-Life Crisis
“A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries.” —Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
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