Royal S. Brown

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Professor of French

Queens College
Department of European Languages & Literatures 
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Flushing, New York 11367 
Tel: (718) 997-5748 (Film Studies Program)
Fax: (718) 997-5784

Ph.D. Program in French
Graduate School and University Center
rbrown@gc.cuny.edu

Primary concentrations:

Film, Music, Contemporary Literature.

  

Books:

  • Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.
  • Focus on Godard (editor).  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.

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Selected articles and Chapters in Anthologies:

  • "Shostakovich's Symphonies: An Appraisal of the Music and the Recordings." High Fidelity 19, 4 (April 1969): 43-47; 94.
  • "Introduction: One Plus One Equals." Focus on Godard (1972, see "Books, etc."): 5-19.
  • "Jean-Luc Godard: Nihilism Versus Aesthetic Distantiation." Focus on Godard: 109-22.
  • "La Chinoise: Child's Play?" Focus on Godard: 168-73.
  • "French Music Since Debussy and Ravel." High Fidelity, 23, 9 (September 1973): 50-65.
  • "An Interview with Shostakovich." High Fidelity 23, 10 (October 1973): 86-89.
  • "An Interview with Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)." High Fidelity 26, 9 (September 1976): 64-67.
  • "Jean Tardieu et le mythe." Nouvelle Revue Française 291 (March 1977): 62-66.
  • "Changing the Score." American Film 2, 6 (April 1977): 62-63.
  • "Considering De Palma." American Film 2, 9 (July/August 1977): 54-61. Excerpts rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 20. Ed. Sharon R. Gunton, ed. Detroit: Gale Research Col., 1981.
  • "Auric Speaks of Then and Now." New York Times (25 June 1978): D19-D-20.
  • "Hitchcock's Spellbound: Jung Versus Freud." Film Psychology Review 4, 1 (Winter/Spring 1980): 35-58.
  • "Eugène Ionesco" (24 entries in the bibliography by Rosette C. Lamont). In A Critical Bibliography of French Literature, Vol. 6: 1837-64.
  • "Jean Tardieu." In A Critical Bibliography of French Literature. Richard A. Brooks, ed. Vol. 6: The Twentieth Century. Ed. Douglas W. Alden and Richard A. Brooks, in 3 vols. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980, III: 1806-09.
  • "Music and Vivre sa vie." Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5, 3 (Summer 1980): 319-33.
  • "Dressed to Kill: Myth and Male Fantasy in the Horror/Suspense Genre." Film/Psychology Review 4, 2 (Summer 1980): 169-82.
  • "Herrmann, Hitchcock, and the Music of the Irrational." Cinema Journal 21, 2 (Spring 1982): 14-49; rpt. in Pro Musica Sana 10, 3-4 (Fall 1983): 15-25;  11, 1 (Spring 1984), 6-13; 11, 2 (Fall 1984): 11-12.
  • "Film Musings": Ongoing column appearing in the bimonthly journal Fanfare; 1983-present.
  • "The Three Faces of Lady Macbeth." Russian and Soviet Music, Essays for Boris Schwarz. Malcolm Hamrick Brown, ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1984: 245-52.
  • "Herrmann, Hitchcock, and the Music of the Irrational." Film Theory and Criticism, 3rd ed.  Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985: 618-49; revised version of 1982 article.
  • "Vertigo as Orphic Tragedy." Literature/Film Quarterly, 14, 1 (January 1986): 32-43; rpt. in David Boyd, ed. Perspectives on Hitchcock. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1995: 112-127.
  • "Film and Classical Music." In Film and the Arts in Symbiosis: A Resource Guide. Gary Edgerton, ed. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987: 162-215.
  • "The Cinema of Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Structure of Myth and the Mythology of Structure."  Alain Robbe-Grillet Film Retrospective. New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1989:  3-11.  Includes filmography, bibliography, and selections from Robbe-Grillet's prose.
  • "An Interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet. Literature/Film Quarterly, 17, 2 (Spring 1989): 74-83.
  • "Serialism in Robbe-Grillet's l'Eden et après: The Narrative and Its Doubles." Literature/Film Quarterly 18, 4 (1990): 210-20.
  • "In Praise of Video: A Response to the 'Statement on the Use of Video in the Classroom.'" Cinema Journal 31, 4 (Summer 1992): 66-71.
  • "Film Music: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Cineaste 21, 1-2 (1995): 62-67.
  • "La Dynamique des émotions: Bernard Herrmann." Cahiers du Cinéma, special issue: "Musiques au cinéma" (December 1995):  25-27; followed by "Entretien avec Bernard Herrmann" (translation of the revised version of "An Interview With Bernard Herrmann" [see 1976] that appears in Overtones and Undertones): 28-30.
  • "Modern Film Music."  The Oxford History of World Cinema. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, ed.  Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996: 558-66.
  • "Back from Among the Dead: The Restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo." Cineaste 23, 1 (Summer 1997): 4-9.
  • "Henri Dutilleux" (biographical essay).  Boston Symphony Orchestra (program booklet, week 3, 1997-98 Season): 23-37; program note on Dutilleux's The Shadows of Time follows: 37-39; bibliography/discography, 53-54.  A modified version of the program note, in English, French, and German, appears in the program booklet of the Erato CD recording, Henri Dutilleux: The Shadows of Time.
  • "Lost and Found: Céline and Julie Go Boating." Cineaste 23, 3 (1998): 30-31.
  • "The Music of Vertigo." In insert booklet accompanying Douglas Gordon, Feature Film (London: Artangel/Book Works/agnès b., 1999): 5-8.
  • "Sound Music in the Films of Alain Robbe-Grillet." Cinesonic: The World of Sound in Film, ed. Philip Brophy.  North Ryde, Australia: Australian Film Radio Television School, 1999: 189-209.
  • "Quo Vadis, Dr. Lecter?: From Manhunter to Hannibal." The Perfect Vision 28 (January/February 2000): 26-31.

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Selected Reviews:

  • "Strzetelski, Jerzy. Some Problems of Short Fiction." The Polish Review, 24, 1 (Spring 1979): 91-93.
  • "Double Life, The Autobiography of Miklós Rózsa." Fanfare 7, 2 (November/December 1983): 423-24.
  • "A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann. By Steven C. Smith." Fanfare 15, 2 (November/December 1991): 602-03.
  • "Alphaville" (laser disc of the film). Cineaste 22, 1 (1996): 52.
  • "Seven" (laser disc of the film). Cineaste 22, 3 (1996): 44-46.
  • "La Cérémonie" (film). Cineaste 22, 4 (1997): 50-51.
  • "The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold" (book). Cineaste 23, 3 (1998): 50.
  • "Cleo from 5 to 7; Vagabond" (laser discs of the films). Cineaste 23, 4 (1998): 56-57.
  • "Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies 1895-1924" (book). Cineaste 24, 1 (1998): 92-93.
  • "Mr. Klein" (video of the film). Cineaste 24, 1 (1998): 82-83.
  • "The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin" (video of the film). Cineaste 24, 2-3 (1999): 88-89.
  • "Les Vampires" (video of the film serial). Cineaste 24, 4 (1999): 49-50.

Film Appearances:

  • Two appearances in the hour-long documentary Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann (New York: Alternating Current International, Inc., 1992). This film received an Academy Award Nomination for the Best Feature-Length Documentary for 1992. Shown on the Bravo cable network in October 1995. Released on VHS and laser-disc videos by Sony Classics in 1995.
  • Several appearances in the hour-long documentary Bilder, die man hören kann (a portrait of the film-composer David Raksin directed by Gerhard Midding). Made for German television (WDR Fernsehen). 1994.

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Interviews with Royal S. Brown:

  • Hall, R. Albert. "An Interview with Royal S. Brown" (First of Two Parts)." Fanfare 2, 3 (January/February 1979): 8-9; 136-39.
  • Hall, R. Albert. "An Interview with Royal S. Brown (Second of Two Parts)." Fanfare 2, 4 (March/April 1979): 7-10; 145-47.
  • Juillerat, Lee. "The Critic's Life: He Views His Field As That of Aesthetics." Herald and News (Klamath Falls, Oregon), 13, 088 (18 February 1983): 2.
  • Serviss, Naomi Freedman. "Movie Music: The Reel Score: Professor Notes the Best and Worst in Film Scoring." New York Newsday (Queens Edition, 8 January 1995): A60.
  • Hubbard, Robert. "Royal S. Brown: Writing Film Music Criticism." Film Score Monthly 58 (June 1995): 10-11.

Miscellaneous:

  • Curator, Alain Robbe-Grillet Retrospective, Anthology Film Archives, New York, 19-30 April 1989.
  • Contributing Editor for Literature/Film Quarterly as of Spring 1988.
  • Editorial Board, Persistence of Vision (Film Journal of the CUNY Film Faculty), Vol. 1, no. 1.

Work in Progress:

  • Images of Images: The Modern and Postmodern Mythologies of Narrative Cinema. Book-length study of the relationship between myth and the cinema, concentrating on postmodern mythology. This study will include major sections devoted to Hitchcock and to Robbe-Grillet.
  • While Daddy Was Away at War: An Autobiographical Critique of Psychotherapy.
  • The Black Maskers. Screenplay based on the play by Leonid Andreyev.

CUNY:

  • Summer Session Coordinator, Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College, CUNY, since 1982.
  • Member of the CUNY Ph.D. Certificate Program in Film since 1993.
  • Director, Film Studies Program, Queens College, since 1982.
  • Deputy Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in French.

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