World Film Locations: Las Vegas Marcelline Block 9781841505886

Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers - and starry-eyed lovers - each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there.

A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas's appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect's World Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films - from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans Eleven to acclaimed classics Rain Man, Casino and The Godfather to cult favourites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack's Las Vegas, the cinematised Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today.

Marcelline Block is a lecturer in history at Princeton University, where she is completing her PhD in French. She is the editor or coeditor of several volumes, including Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema.