Back to the Future

BFI Film Classics

Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate

British Film Institute

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Back to the Future was the top-grossing film of 1985 and winner of the 1986 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture. This fascinating study places the film in the historical context of  the Reagan era, the “New New Hollywood,” and director Robert Zemeckis’s filmmaking career. Among the major themes explored are time travel and the potential and pitfalls of science and atomic energy. The book also considers teen culture in the 1980s and the 1950s, depicted in the film as a period in which traditional “American” values and gender roles contrasted sharply with the more troubled decade from which Marty McFly begins his time-traveling adventures. Includes 60 color stills from the movie.

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Matt  rated it  
Dec 4, 2011
My first experience with the BFI series and I'm sold and can't wait to read more. An incredibly thorough and academic approach to a film that doesn't often get that treatment. Highlights for me include explorations of race, Oedipal parallels, and the Reagan-era refusal to acknowledge the relevance o ...more
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Don  rated it  
Jun 26, 2011
A mixed bag. On the one hand, some of the analyses and discussions are truly thought-provoking, and insightful. Others seem slightly more ludicrous in terms of their leaps of logic, and the language is often unnecessarily dry and obtuse. Unfocused and somewhat frustrating - but still worth a read ...more
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About the Author

Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate

Andrew Shail  is the co-editor of Menstruation: A Cultural History and Neurology and Modernity, and is the editor of Reading the Cinematograph. He is a News International Research Fellow in Film at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University. Robin Stoate has contributed articles to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, forthcoming in 2010.

Andrew Shail
Robin Stoate

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Back to the Future
BFI Film Classics
Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
British Film Institute
August 2010
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781844572939
ISBN10: 1844572935
7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, 96 pages, 60 color photos
$15.00
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