American Indies Series Editors: Gary Needham & Yannis Tzioumakis This series of books covers contemporary American films that have found commercial success but which have not been constrained by the formal and ideological parameters often associated with mainstream Hollywood cinema. Each volume explores a specific film and combines innovative and original research with clearly defined classroom-orientated frameworks of film analysis. The Spanish Prisoner Yannis Tzioumakis The Spanish Prisoner is playwright-turned-independent filmmaker David Mamet's most commercially successful film. Nodding to such crowd-pleasing classics as Hitchcock's North by Northwest, The Spanish Prisoner is nonetheless a particularly idiosyncratic film that betrays its origin outside the Hollywood mainstream. Featuring a heavily convoluted narrative that is the product of an unreliable narration; an excessive, often anti-classical, visual style that draws attention to itself; and belonging to the generic category of the 'con game film' which actively challenges the spectator to comprehend the unfolding of the narrative, The Spanish Prisoner is a film that bridges genre filmmaking with personal visual style, independent film production with niche distribution, and mainstream subject matter with unconventional filmic techniques. This book discusses The Spanish Prisoner as an example of contemporary American independent cinema while also using it as a vehicle to explore several key ideas in film studies, especially in terms of aesthetics, narrative, style and genre. Key Features * Distinguishes between independent and 'indie' cinema through an examination of the Classics divisions, especially Sony Pictures Classics * Assesses the position of David Mamet within American cinema and especially within the Independent sector * Introduces the genre categories of the 'con artist' and the 'con game' film and discusses The Spanish Prisoner as a key example of the latter * Examines the ways in which narrative, narration and visual style deviate from the mainstream/classical aesthetic Yannis Tzioumakis Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Liverpool.