Cengage Learning

The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, 1st Edition

  • Editor: Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann
  • Published By:
  • ISBN-10: 0470671157
  • ISBN-13: 9780470671153
  • DDC: 791.430973
  • Grade Level Range: College Freshman - College Senior
  • 2456 Pages | eBook
  • Original Copyright 2011 | Published/Released July 2013
  • This publication's content originally published in print form: 2011

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About

Overview

The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film is the first multi-volume reference of its kind, assembling the work of a diverse group of scholars who interrogate the entirety of American cinema. The History offers essays on a number of specialized topics that, taken as a whole, represent a comprehensive and nuanced overview of American film history from the intersecting perspectives of industry, audiences, aesthetics, culture, politics, issues, and ideology. Volume I: Origins to 1928 The essays in Volume One concentrate on early cinema pioneers like Griffith, Porter, Chaplin, and formative events and practices such as the industry’s move to the West and the coming of sound in film. Volume II: 1929 to 1945 Volume Two examines the golden age of the studio era when Hollywood responded to tumultuous events such as the Great Depression and WW II. These are the years of classic genre production with the musical, animated feature, western, screwball comedy, and gangster films defining American attitudes about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and the role of the state at mid-century. Volume III: 1945 to 1975 This volume covers the turbulent years from the decline of the studios to the emergence of the New Hollywood, including such crucial topics as the blacklist, the Paramount case, the rise of television, the flowering of underground film, and the mainstreaming of adult cinema. Volume IV: 1976 to the Present In the post-Vietnam, New Right era, America and its cinema shifted toward family values and a new love affair with consumption that extended to advances in media technology. Volume Four examines the period from 1976when black independent, avant-garde, and feminist filmmakers were producing challenging and unconventional works to the present, when digital imaging is redefining the very concept of cinema.

Contributors

Contributors

  • Cynthia Lucia
  • Roy Grundmann

Table of Contents

Front Cover.
The Editors.
Title Page.
Copyright Page.
Contents of Volume I Origins to 1928.
Full Table of Contents.
Preface.
Acknowledgments.
Contributors to Volume I.
1: Setting the Stage.
2: Introduction to Volume I: American Film, Origins to 1928.
3: Writing American Film History.
4: Origins to 1914.
5: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter.
6: From Peep Show to Picture Palace: The Early Exhibition of Motion Pictures.
7: The Imagined Audience in the Nickelodeon Era.
8: D. W. Griffith And The Development Of American Narrative Cinema.
9: Pink-Slipped: What Happened to the Women in the Silent Film Industry?.
10: 1915–1928.
11: Women and the Silent Screen.
12: “The Poor Little Rich Girl”: Class and Embodiment in the Films of Mary Pickford.
13: African-Americans and Silent Films.
14: Chaplin and Silent Film Comedy.
15: The Devil in the Details: Thomas Ince, Intertitles, and the Institutionalization of Writing in American Cinema.
16: Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. Demille: Early Hollywood and the Discourse of Directorial. “Genius”.
17: In the Trenches, on the Screen: World War I on Film.
18: American Modern: King Vidor's the Crowd.
19: The Star System.
20: Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology.
21: Unsophisticated Lady the Vicissitudes of the Materna Melodrama in Hollywood.
22: Two or Three Things We thought We Knew about Silent Film Sound.
23: Synchronized Sound Comes to the Cinema.
24: Film and Culture Summary Essays.
25: Helios and the Apocalypse Visions of American History in Films by Griffith, Ford, and Stroheim.
26: Self-Reflection in American Silent Film.
Volume I Index.
Title Page.
Contents of Volume II 1929 to 1945.
Contributors to Volume II.
1: Setting the Stage.
2: Introduction to Volume II: American Film, 1929 to 1945.
3: Era of the Moguls: The Studio System.
4: 1929–1938.
5: Re-Visioning: Frank Capra.
6: “As Close to Real Life As Hollywood Ever Gets”: Headline Pictures, Topical Movies, Editorial Cinema, and Studio Realism in the 1930s.
7: Early American Avant-Garde Cinema.
8: 1930S Documentary and Visual Culture.
9: Hollywood and SpanishSpeaking Audiences.
10: “Let 'Em Have It”: The Ironic Fate of the 1930s Hollywood Gangster.
11: Landscapes of Fantasy, Gardens of Deceit: The Adventure Film Between Colonialism and Tourism.
12: The Screwball Comedy.
13: Cinema and the Modern Woman.
14: Queering the (New) Deal.
15: 1939–1945.
16: The Hollywood A-Production Western.
17: There's No Place Like Home: The Hollywood Folk Musical.
18: The Magician Orson Welles and Film Style.
19: Classical Cel Animation, World War II, and Bambi.
20: Friz Freleng's Jazz: Animation and Music at Warner Bros.
21: Mapping Why We Fight: Frank Capra and the US Army Orientation Film in World War II.
22: A Victory “Uneasy With Its Contrasts”: The Hollywood Left Fights World War II.
23: Hollywood Unions and Hollywood Blacklists.
24: Film and Culture: Summary Essays.
25: Hollywood as Historian, 1929–1945.
26: Taking Stock at War's End: Gender, Genre, and Hollywood Labor in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.
Volume II Index.
Title Page.
Contents of Volume III 1946 to 1975.
Contributors to Volume III.
1: Setting the Stage.
2: Introduction to Volume III: American Film, 1946 to 1975.
3: Natalie Wood: Studio Stardom and Hollywood in Transition.
4: Truthmovies are Just Beginning: American Independent Cinema in the Postwar Era.
5: 1946–1955.
6: The Politics of Force of Evil: An Analysis of Abraham Polonsky's Preblacklist Film.
7: The Gun in the Briefcase: Or, the Inscription of Class in Film Noir.
8: The Actors Studio in the Early Cold War.
9: Hollywood at the Margins: Samuel Fuller, Phil Karlson, and Joseph H. Lewis.
10: Authorship and Billy Wilder.
11: Laughter and Agony in Minnelli's the Long, Long Trailer: Or, “Isn't This Fun, Honey?”.
12: “Got-To-See”: Teenpix and the Social Problem Picture – Trends and Cycles.
13: 1956–1965.
14: Cold War Thrillers.
15: American Underground Film.
16: Adults Only: Low-Budget Exploitation.
17: Black Representation in Independent Cinema: From Civil Rights to Black Power.
18: 1966–1975.
19: Cinema Direct and Indirect: American Documentary, 1960–1975.
20: “The Rise of a Film Generation”: Film Culture and Cinephilia.
21: Comedy and the Dismantling of the Hollywood Western.
22: The New Hollywood.
23: The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation.
24: “One Big Lousy X”: The Cinema of Urban Crisis.
25: Pornography in the Cinema: Last Tango in Paris, Deep Throat, and Boys in the Sand.
26: Nashville: Putting on The Show.
27: Film and Culture Summary Essays.
28: American Film Criticism.
29: It's Only a Movie: Reflexivity and Popular Film.
30: Cinema and the Age of Television, 1946–1975.
Volume III Index.
Title Page.
Contents of Volume IV 1976 to the Present.
Contributors to Volume IV.
1: Setting the Stage.
2: Introduction to Volume IV: American Film, 1976 to the Present.
3: Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry.
4: Independent Film l980s to the Present.
5: 1976-1988.
6: Reclaiming the Black Family Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and the “L.A. Rebellion”.
7: Feminism, Cinema, and Film Criticism.
8: American Avant-Garde Cinema from 1970 to the Present.
9: A Reintroduction to the American Horror Film.
10: Charting the Middle Course the Star Trek Films and 1980s Science Fiction Cinema.
11: Back to the Future Hollywood and Reagan's America.
12: Eros and Thanatos Hollywood and the Teenage Marketplace.
13: 1989-1998.
14: Oliver Stone Hollywood Historian.
15: Black Crossover Cinema.
16: The Queer 1990s the Challenge and Failure of Radical Change.
17: 24/7: Cable Television, Hollywood, and the Narrative Feature Film.
18: Plasmatics and Prisons: The Morph and the Spectacular Emergence of CGI.
19: 1999-Present.
20: Mainstream Documentary Since 1999.
21: Truthiness is Stranger than Fictition: The “New Biopic”.
22: The Coen Brothers and the Post-Hollywood Studio Era.
23: “Asia” As Global Hollywood Commodity.
24: The Blockbuster Superhero.
25: Computer Animation: Margins to Mainstream.
26: Limited Engagement: The Iraq War on Film.
27: American Film After 9/11.
28: Film and Culture Summary Essays.
29: The Biggest Independent Pictures Ever Made: Industrial Reflexivity Today.
30: The End of Cinema (As We Know It): American Movies and Movie Business, 1995–2009.
Volume IV Index.