Who Framed F.W. Murnau's Faust? Intertextuality, Discourse & the Historical Film on DVD

This thesis examines the ways in which historical films are presented on extended DVD editions, taking its examples primarily from The Criterion Collection and Eureka! Masters of Cinema. It deconstructs the DVD as an object immersed in a set of social practices and conventions. It analyses the intertextual processes at work, assessing them with theories on intertextuality and framing them through the work of Gerard Genette, Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler and Jacques Derrida. The second part looks at how specifically situated discursive frameworks are utilised in order to promote certain notions of cinema and culture. Its focus is primarily on how these DVDs can be seen to promote notions of authorship and are actively engaged in processes of canon formation