Reinventing Hollywood : how 1940s filmmakers changed movie storytelling / David Bordwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bordwell, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--California--Los Angeles--History--20th century.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Motion pictures--California--Los Angeles--Plots, themes, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (583 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Summary:

In the 1940s, American movies changed. Flashbacks began to be used in outrageous, unpredictable ways. Soundtracks flaunted voice-over commentary, and characters might pivot from a scene to address the viewer. Incidents were replayed from different characters’ viewpoints, and sometimes those versions proved to be false. Films now plunged viewers into characters’ memories, dreams, and hallucinations. Some films didn’t have protagonists, while others centered on anti-heroes or psychopaths. Women might be on the verge of madness, and neurotic heroes lurched into violent confrontations. Combining many of these ingredients, a new genre emerged—the psychological thriller, populated by women in peril and innocent bystanders targeted for death. If this sounds like today’s cinema, that’s because it is. In Reinventing Hollywood, David Bordwell examines the full range and depth of trends that crystallized into traditions. He shows how the Christopher Nolans and Quentin Tarantinos of today owe an immense debt to the dynamic, occasionally delirious narrative experiments of the Forties. Through in-depth analyses of films both famous and virtually unknown, from Our Town and All About Eve to Swell Guy and The Guilt of Janet Ames, Bordwell assesses the era’s unique achievements and its legacy for future filmmakers. Reinventing Hollywood is a groundbreaking study of how Hollywood storytelling became a more complex art and essential reading for lovers of popular cinema.

Contents:

Introduction: the way Hollywood told it

The frenzy of five fat years; Interlude: Spring 1940: lessons from our town

Time and time again; Interlude: Kitty and Lydia, Julia and Nancy

Plots: the menu; Interlude: Schema and revision, between rounds

Slices, strands, and chunks; Interlude: Mankiewicz: modularity and polyphony

What they didn't know was; Interlude: identity thieves and tangled networks

Voices out of the dark; Interlude: Remaking middlebrow modernism

Into the depths

Call it psychology; Interlude: Innovation by misadventure

From the Naked City to Bedford Falls

I love a mystery; Interlude: Sturges, or showing the puppet strings

Artifice in excelsis; Interlude: Hitchcock and Welles: The lessons of the masters

Conclusion: the way Hollywood keeps telling it.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-226-48789-X

OCLC:

1191864446