American Film History : Selected Readings, Origins To 1960.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucia, Cynthia.

Contributor:

Grundmann, Roy.

Simon, Art.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion picture industry--United States--History--20th century.

Motion picture industry -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Motion picture industry--United States.

Motion picture industry -- United States.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (568 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015.

Summary:

This authoritative collection of introductory and specialized readings explores the rich and innovative history of this period in American cinema. Spanning an essential range of subjects from the early 1900s Nickelodeon to the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, it combines a broad historical context with careful readings of individual films. Charts the rise of film in early twentieth-century America from its origins to 1960, exploring mainstream trends and developments, along with topics often relegated to the margins of standard film histories Covers diverse issues ranging from silent film and its iconic figures such as Charlie Chaplin, to the coming of sound and the rise of film genres, studio moguls, and, later, the Production Code and Cold War Blacklist Designed with both students and scholars in mind: each section opens with an historical overview and includes chapters that provide close, careful readings of individual films clustered around specific topics Accessibly structured by historical period, offering valuable cultural, social, and political contexts Contains careful, close analysis of key filmmakers and films from the era including D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil B. DeMille, Don Juan, The Jazz Singer, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Scarface, Red Dust, Glorifying the American Girl, Meet Me in St. Louis, Citizen Kane, Bambi, Frank Capra's Why We Fight series, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Rebel Without a Cause, Force of Evil, and selected American avant-garde and underground films, among many others. Additional online resources such as sample syllabi, which include suggested readings and filmographies for both general specialized courses, will be available online. May be used alongside American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, to provide an authoritative

study of American cinema through the new millennium.

Contents:

Intro

American Film History

The Editors

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Notes

Part I Origins to 1928

1 Setting the Stage

The Nickelodeon Era

Censorship Battles

The Industry

Genres and Stars

Hollywood and World Cinema

The Jazz Age On-Screen- Inside and Outside of Hollywood

Newsreels

Animation

The First Avant-Garde

The Coming of Sound to the Cinema

References

2 D. W. Griffith and the Development of American Narrative Cinema

Griffiths Move to Biograph: An Industry in Flux

Storytelling Challenges and Stylistic Strategies

1908-1909: Shaping a Story

1910-1911: An Increasingly Confident Style

1912-1913: Refinement and Reconfiguration

3 Women and the Silent Screen

Exhibitors, Moviegoers, and Fans: "Remember the 83%!"

Filmmakers, Stars, and Extras: Women at Work in Early Hollywood

Critics, Writers, and Tastemakers: Film Culture as a Feminine Sphere

Censors, Reformers, and Educators: "Ultimately a Womans Responsibility"

Conclusion: "History Has Not Been Kind"

4 African-Americans and Silent Films

Early Background: Vaudeville, Blackface Minstrelsy, and Film

Story Films, Melodrama, and Uplift

White-Owned Race Film Companies: Competition and Collaboration

The Minors: Lesser-Known Race Film Companies

The End: The Coming of Sound

5 Chaplin and Silent Film Comedy

The Tramp and Chaplins Rise to Stardom

From Willie Work to the Glasses Character: Harold Lloyd

A Calm Demeanor Beneath a Porkpie Hat: Buster Keaton

City Lights: A Farewell to Silent Film Comedy

6 Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille

Two Directors and the Rise of the Feature Film

Cecil B. DeMille: The Genius of Jazz-Age Hokum

Erich von Stroheim: The Genius Hollywood Loved to Hate

Notes.

References

7 The Star System

Larger-than-Life Figures

Reinventing the Star System

Making Stars Pay

Coming to Know the Stars

The Publics Loyalties

The Compulsion to Repeat

8 Synchronized Sound Comes to the Cinema

Warner Bros. Gambit: The Vitaphone

Early Sound Cinema: A Multimedia Distraction

The Technical Demands of Sound

Fine-Tuning: Sound-on-Film Processes and Theories of Sound Recording

Conclusion: The Lost Futures of Sync Sound

Part II 1929-1945

9 Setting the Stage

The Studio Industry

The Production Code

B-Films

Studio House Styles, Genres, and Auteurs

Innovations in Film Technology

Documentary Filmmaking

The Film Avant-Garde

Hollywood and World War II

Hollywood and Postwar Challenges

Note

10 Era of the Moguls

The Historical Context

The Industrial Context

The Corporate Context

Censorship and Self-Regulation

Fox and Twentieth Century-Fox

MGM

Paramount Pictures

RKO

Warner Bros.

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Universal Pictures Corporation

United Artists and Hollywoods Semi-Independent Producers

Conclusion

11 "As Close to Real Life as Hollywood Ever Gets"

Realism and Editorial Cinema

Fugitive

Burbanking

Hollywoods Popular Front

Black Legion

Conclusion: "An Official Welcome to Ideas"?

12 Early American Avant-Garde Cinema

Early Avant-Garde Exhibition and Reception

Troubled Modernism and the First American Avant-Garde

Representations of Nature in the Early American Avant-Garde

Light, Color, and Form as Subjects of the Early American Avant-Garde

Music, Movement, and Dance in Early Avant-Garde Film

Surrealist and Psychoanalytic Expressions in the Early Avant-Garde.

Other Artistic Influences within the Early Avant-Garde

Parody and Metaphor in the Early Avant-Garde

13 "Let 'Em Have It"

Enter the All-Talking Gangster

Early 1930s Gangsters: The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and Scarface

The Post-Gangster Gangster Movie: "G" Men and Bullets or Ballots

The Post-Gangster Gangster Comedy

14 Landscapes of Fantasy, Gardens of Deceit

Generic Configurations

Action and Movement, Spectacle and Performance, the Musical and Opera

Personality versus Genre Hybridity: The Adventurer as Character

Colonialism and Its White Heroes

Tarzan

Landscape on Display

The Encounter with the Mythical and the Magical

15 Cinema and the Modern Woman

Cinema, the New Woman, and Urban Modernity

New Women and Visual Attractions

The Age of Order and the Demise of the New Woman

A Notable Exception: Free Women and Screwball Comedies

16 Queering the (New) Deal

Queerness and National Crisis

Reading the Code

The Question of Subversion

The Question of Difference

Lesbian Representation During a Masculinity Crisis

Establishing Masculinity

17 Theres No Place Like Home

Genre and Modernity

The Hollywood Musical and Wartime America

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Babes in Arms (1939)

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

18 The Magician

Deep Focus and Realism

Faust or Quixote?

19 Classical Cel Animation, World War II, and Bambi

Genre and Mode of Production

Disneys Impact on the Art Form

Changes in the 1940s Cartoon: Speed and Sex

Animation and War

Bambi

Anthropomorphism and the Cycle of Life

Dread and Death

The Musical and Domesticated World of Nature.

Notes

20 Mapping Why We Fight

Where We Fight

Why We Fight and the Postwar World

21 A Victory "Uneasy with Its Contrasts"

Introduction: The Promise of a Bloodbath

The "Democratic Tradition" Comes to Hollywood

A Cinema of Presence

Bringing the War into the Hollywood Film

Race, the Hollywood Left, and the War Film

22 Hollywood as Historian, 1929-1945

Film versus History?

A Hollywood Cavalcade

Hollywoods Historians in the SoundEra

History, Prestige, and Women Audiences

Part III 1945-1960

23 Setting the Stage

Television and the Movies

The Paramount Case and HUAC

Postwar Hollywood Genres and Auteurs

Hollywood Realism and a New Method of Acting

The Studio Era in Transition

The End of the Classical Era

24 Taking Stock at Wars End

Constructing a Hollywood Prestige Film

The Martha Ivers Marketing Campaign

Film Noirs Male-Centered Narrative Arc

Crime, Gendered Perspective, and the Womans Film

Company Town

25 Natalie Wood

Coming of Age in Hollywood

Sex and the Single Girl

Identity Crisis and Transition: Star and Actor

Identity Crisis and Transition: Hollywood Old and New

26 The Politics of Force of Evil

Introduction

Close Description

Combining the Personal and the Political

Considerations of Genre

The Story of Cain and Abel

Spectatorial Affect

The Ending

Minor Imperfections

27 The Actors Studio in the Early Cold War

Cold War Winners (the Actors Studio) and Losers (the Actors Lab)

The Actors Studio and Method Acting: From Kazan to Strasberg

Publicity versus Reality

The Method Acting Style and Cold War Conceptions of Character.

Polemics and Cultural Context

28 Authorship and Billy Wilder

La politique des auteurs

Auteur Theory

Vienna, Berlin, Hollywood

Double Indemnity

Ace in the Hole

The Apartment

Kiss Me, Stupid

29 Cold War Thrillers

A Diplomatic Victory?

Neurotic and Paranoid Views of World Affairs

Fortress America?

Foreign Intrigues

Domestic Discontents

Establishing the Industrys Bona Fides

We Will Not Be Driven by Fear into an Age of Unreason

30 American Underground Film

Defining "Underground Cinema"

Roots of the Underground Movement

Maya Deren and Her Influence

Kenneth Angers Fireworks and Joseph Cornells Rose Hobart

Jack Smith: His Work and His Influence

Gregory Markopoulos and Ken Jacobs

Pull My Daisy and Beat Cinema

The Cinema of Andy Warhol

Underground Narrative Filmmaking

Experimental Animation: Harry Smith

Adventures in Perception: Marie Menken, Stan Brakhage, and BruceBaillie

Index

EULA.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Lucia, Cynthia American Film History

ISBN:

9781118475164

OCLC:

913331485