Download or read book The Classical Hollywood Cinema written by David Bordwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 1338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A dense, challenging and important book.' Philip French Observer 'At the very least, this blockbuster is probably the best single volume history of Hollywood we're likely to get for a very long time.' Paul Kerr City Limits 'Persuasively argued, the book is also packed with facts, figures and photographs.' Nigel Andrews Financial Times Acclaimed for their breakthrough approach, Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson analyze the basic conditions of American film-making as a historical institution and consider to what extent Hollywood film production constitutes a systematic enterprise, in both its style and its business operations. Despite differences of director, genre or studio, most Hollywood films operate within a set of shared assumptions about how a film should look and sound. Such assumptions are neither natural nor inevitable; but because classical-style films have been the type most widely seen, they have come to be accepted as the 'norm' of film-making and viewing. The authors show how these classical conventions were formulated and standardized, and how they responded to the arrival of sound, colour, widescreen ratios and stereophonic sound. They argue that each new technological development has served a function within an existing narrational system. The authors also examine how the Hollywood cinema standardized the film-making process itself. They describe how, over the course of its history, Hollywood developed distinct modes of production in a constant search for maximum efficiency, predictability and novelty. Set apart by its combination of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this book is the standard work on the classical Hollywood cinema style of film-making from the silent era to the 1960s. Now available in paperback, it is a 'must' for film students, lecturers and all those seriously interested in the development of the film industry.
Download or read book The Classical Hollywood Cinema written by David Bordwell and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of American studio filmmaking that examines its distinct mode of film practice, in both production and style, from 1917 through 1960.
Download or read book Post Classical Hollywood written by Barry Langford and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of World War II, Hollywood basked in unprecedented prosperity. Since then, numerous challenges and crises have changed the American film industry in ways beyond imagination in 1945. Nonetheless, at the start of a new century Hollywood's worldwide dominance is intact - indeed, in today's global economy the products of the American entertainment industry (of which movies are now only one part) are more ubiquitous than ever. How does today's "e;Hollywood"e; - absorbed into transnational media conglomerates like NewsCorp., Sony, and Viacom - differ from the legendary studios of Hollywood's Golden Age? What are the dominant frameworks and conventions, the historical contexts and the governing attitudes through which films are made, marketed and consumed today? How have these changed across the last seven decades? And how have these evolving contexts helped shape the form, the style and the content of Hollywood movies, from Singin' in the Rain to Pirates of the Caribbean? Barry Langford explains and interrogates the concept of "e;post-classical"e; Hollywood cinema - its coherence, its historical justification and how it can help or hinder our understanding of Hollywood from the forties to the present. Integrating film history, discussion of movies' social and political dimensions, and analysis of Hollywood's distinctive methods of storytelling, Post-Classical Hollywood charts key critical debates alongside the histories they interpret, while offering its own account of the "e;post-classical."e; Wide-ranging yet concise, challenging and insightful, Post-Classical Hollywood offers a new perspective on the most enduringly fascinating artform of our age.
Download or read book Classic Hollywood written by Veronica Pravadelli and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
Download or read book Classical Hollywood Narrative written by Jane Gaines and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of film studies
Download or read book The Classical Hollywood Reader written by Steve Neale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Classical Hollywood Reader brings together essential readings to provide a history of Hollywood from the 1910s to the mid 1960s. Following on from a Prologue that discusses the aesthetic characteristics of Classical Hollywood films, Part 1 covers the period between the 1910s and the mid-to-late 1920s. It deals with the advent of feature-length films in the US and the growing national and international dominance of the companies responsible for their production, distribution and exhibition. In doing so, it also deals with film making practices, aspects of style, the changing roles played by women in an increasingly business-oriented environment, and the different audiences in the US for which Hollywood sought to cater. Part 2 covers the period between the coming of sound in the mid 1920s and the beginnings of the demise of the `studio system` in late 1940s. In doing so it deals with the impact of sound on films and film production in the US and Europe, the subsequent impact of the Depression and World War II on the industry and its audiences, the growth of unions, and the roles played by production managers and film stars at the height of the studio era. Part 3 deals with aspects of style, censorship, technology, and film production. It includes articles on the Production Code, music and sound, cinematography, and the often neglected topic of animation. Part 4 covers the period between 1946 and 1966. It deals with the demise of the studio system and the advent of independent production. In an era of demographic and social change, it looks at the growth of drive-in theatres, the impact of television, the advent of new technologies, the increasing importance of international markets, the Hollywood blacklist, the rise in art house imports and in overseas production, and the eventual demise of the Production Code. Designed especially for courses on Hollywood Cinema, the Reader includes a number of newly researched and written chapters and a series of introductions to each of its parts. It concludes with an epilogue, a list of resources for further research, and an extensive bibliography.
Download or read book Classical Hollywood Cinema Sexuality and the Politics of the Face written by Paul Morrison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Hollywood Cinema, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Face examines the representation of iconic female faces in the golden age of Hollywood – Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor – and the gay male fetishization of those faces. Classical Hollywood cinema is given to an aesthetic and ideological struggle between rival scopic economies: an erotics of “to-be-looked-at-ness” is countered by a hermeneutics of “to-be-seen-through-ness.” The latter emerges triumphant, but the legendary female faces of Hollywood resist, in their different ways, a coercive and normalizing knowledge, which is the source of the gay male investment in them. A disciplinary society privileges a hermeneutics of gaze; the iconomic female faces of classical Hollywood cinema demand an erotics. Classical Holly Cinema, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Face explores the tension between the two through detailed readings of Ninotchka, Sunset Boulevard, and Suddenly, Last Summer in the context of early and mid-century cinema and culture. It includes, for instance, an analysis of D. W. Griffith and blackface, the Stonewall riots and the coming-into-voice of the modern gay subject, several major films by Hitchcock, Citizen Kane, and the emergence of rival standards of beauty, both female and male, in figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. This is an important study for students of queer theory, film theory and history, and gender and sexuality studies.
Download or read book Uninvited written by Patricia White and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lesbian characters, stories, and images were barred from onscreen depiction in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s together with all forms of "sex perversion." Through close readings of gothics, ghost films, and maternal melodramas addressed to female audiences, Uninvited argues that viewers are "invited" to make lesbian "inferences." Looking at the lure of some of the great female star personae (in films such as Rebecca, Pinky, The Old Maid, Queen Christina, and The Haunting) and at the visual coding of supporting actresses, it identifies lesbian spectatorial strategies. White's archival research, textual analyses, and novel theoretical insights make an important contribution to film, lesbian, and feminist studies. Book jacket.
Download or read book Classical Hollywood Film Cycles written by Zoe Wallin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ways in which Hollywood film cycles from the 1930s to the 1960s were shaped by their surrounding industrial contexts and market environments, to build an inclusive conception of the form, operation, and function of film cycles. By foregrounding patterns of distribution, spaces of exhibition, and modes of consumption as key components of the form and mechanics of cycles, this book develops a methodology for defining cycles based on an analysis of the industry and trade discourse. Applying her unique framework to six case studies of different cycles, Zoe Wallin blends a wide range of historical sources to analyze the many cultural, social, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts relevant to these films. This book makes an important contribution to the literature in the area of film historiography, and will be of interest to any scholars of film studies, history and media studies.
Download or read book Neo Noir as Post Classical Hollywood Cinema written by Robert Arnett and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema suggests the terms “noir” and “neo-noir” have been rendered almost meaningless by overuse. The book seeks to re-establish a purpose for neo-noir films and re-consider the organization of 60 years of neo-noir films. Using the notion of post-classical, the book establishes how neo-noir breaks into many movements, some based on time and others based on thematic similarities. The combined movements then form a mosaic of neo-noir. The time-based movements examine Transitional Noir (1960s-early 1970s), Hollywood Renaissance Noir in the 1970s, Eighties Noir, Nineties Noir, and Digital Noir of the 2000s. The thematic movements explore Nostalgia Noir, Hybrid Noir, and Remake and Homage Noir. Academics as well as film buffs will find this book appealing as it deconstructs popular films and places them within new contexts.
Download or read book Classic Hollywood Classic Whiteness written by Daniel Bernardi and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Precocious Charms written by Gaylyn Studlar and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Precocious Charms, Gaylyn Studlar examines how Hollywood presented female stars as young girls or girls on the verge of becoming women. Child stars are part of this study but so too are adult actresses who created motion picture masquerades of youthfulness. Studlar details how Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, and Audrey Hepburn performed girlhood in their films. She charts the multifaceted processes that linked their juvenated star personas to a wide variety of cultural influences, ranging from Victorian sentimental art to New Look fashion, from nineteenth-century children’s literature to post-World War II sexology, and from grand opera to 1930s radio comedy. By moving beyond the general category of "woman," Precocious Charms leads to a new understanding of the complex pleasures Hollywood created for its audience during the half century when film stars were a major influence on America’s cultural imagination.
Download or read book The Way Hollywood Tells It written by David Bordwell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-04-10 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today’s bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers have created a durable tradition—one that we should not be ashamed to call artistic, and one that survives in both mainstream entertainment and niche-marketed indie cinema. Bordwell traces the continuity of this tradition in a wide array of films made since 1960, from romantic comedies like Jerry Maguire and Love Actually to more imposing efforts like A Beautiful Mind. He also draws upon testimony from writers, directors, and editors who are acutely conscious of employing proven principles of plot and visual style. Within the limits of the "classical" approach, innovation can flourish. Bordwell examines how imaginative filmmakers have pushed the premises of the system in films such as JFK, Memento, and Magnolia. He discusses generational, technological, and economic factors leading to stability and change in Hollywood cinema and includes close analyses of selected shots and sequences. As it ranges across four decades, examining classics like American Graffiti and The Godfather as well as recent success like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, this book provides a vivid and engaging interpretation of how Hollywood moviemakers have created a vigorous, resourceful tradition of cinematic storytelling that continues to engage audiences around the world.
Download or read book Settling the Score written by Kathryn Kalinak and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1992-12-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the earliest experiments in musical accompaniment carried out in the Edison Laboratories, Kathryn Kalinak uses archival material to outline the history of American music and film. Focusing on the scores of several key composers of the sound era, including Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Captain Blood, Max Steiner’s The Informer, Bernard Herrmann’s The Magnificent Ambersons, and David Raksin’s Laura, Kalinak concludes that classical scoring conventions were designed to ensure the dominance of narrative exposition. Her analyses of contemporary work such as John Williams’ The Empire Strikes Back and Basil Poledouris’ RoboCop demonstrate how the traditions of the classical era continue to influence scoring practices today.
Download or read book A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema 1930 1980 written by Robert B. Ray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert B. Ray examines the ideology of the most enduringly popular cinema in the world--the Hollywood movie. Aided by 364 frame enlargements, he describes the development of that historically overdetermined form, giving close readings of five typical instances: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver. Like the heroes of these movies, American filmmaking has avoided commitment, in both plot and technique. Instead of choosing left or right, avant-garde or tradition, American cinema tries to have it both ways. Although Hollywood's commercial success has led the world audience to equate the American cinema with film itself, Hollywood filmmaking is a particular strategy designed to respond to specific historical situations. As an art restricted in theoretical scope but rich in individual variations, the American cinema poses the most interesting question of popular culture: Do dissident forms have any chance of remaining free of a mass medium seeking to co-opt them?
Download or read book Nordic Exposures written by Arne Lunde and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series offers interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Nordic region of Scandinavia and the Baltic States and their cultural connections in North America. By redefining the boundaries of Scandinavian studies to include the Baltic States and Scandinavian America, the series presents books that focus on the study of the culture, history, literature, and politics of the North. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Classical Film Violence written by Stephen Prince and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the interplay between the aesthetics and the censorship of violence in classic Hollywood films from 1930 to 1968, the era of the Production Code, when filmmakers were required to have their scripts approved before they could start production. A stylistic history of American screen violence that is grounded in industry documentation. [back cover].
