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film
Film was arguably the dominant art form and
communication medium of last century.
technologies
For an overview of
the technology consult Brian Winston's Technologies
of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography & Television
(London, BFI 96) and The Cinema Apparatus (New York, St Martins 80) edited
by Teresa De Lauretis & Stephen Heath or the drier A
Technological History of Motion Pictures & Television
(Berkeley, Uni of California Press 67) edited by Raymond
Fielding.
John Belton's Widescreen Cinema
(Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 92) explores a technology
that didn't reach takeoff. Donald Crafton's
The Talkies: American Cinema's
Transition to Sound, 1926-1931 (New York, Scribner's
97) considers one that did.
Neil Harris' Cultural Excursions: Marketing
Appetites & Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago,
Uni of Chicago Press 90) notes that colour films date
from the mid 1890s, with the first color feature film
appearing in 1921. By 1920, 80% of Hollywood features were
being tinted.
impacts
There are revisionist views of powerful early impacts in
Cinema & the Invention of Modern Life
(Berkeley, Uni of California Press 95) edited by Leo
Charney & Vanessa Schwartz and Deac Rossell's Living
Pictures: The Origins of the Movies (Albany,
State Uni of New York Press 98). Questions of film
censorship are explored in our censorship
guide.
For consumption we recommend Douglas Gomery's
Shared Pleasures: A
History of Movie Presentation in the United States
(Madison, Uni of Wisconsin Press 92) and David Nasaw's Going
Out: The Rise & Fall of Public Amusements (New
York, Basic Books 93).
For film as a shaper and reflection of community
attitudes explore Robert Toplin's Hollywood As Mirror
(Westport, Greenwood 93) and History by Hollywood
(Urbana, Uni of Illinois Press 96). Spielberg's Holocaust:
Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List
(Bloomington, Indiana Uni Press 97), edited by Yosefa
Loshitzky, is suggestive.
Steven Ross'
Working-Class Hollywood:
Silent Film & the Shaping of Class in America
(Princeton, Princeton Uni Press 98) and Kevin Brownlow's Behind the Mask of Innocence
(New York, Knopf 90) are more subtle than Sharon
Ullman's doctrinaire The
Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America
(Berkeley, Uni of California Press 97). Lawrence
Levine's Unpredictable Past (New York, Oxford 93)
is incisive.
Thomas Cripps' Hollywood's High Noon: Moviemaking
& Society Before Television (Baltimore, Johns
Hopkins Uni Press 97) is a thoughtful study of the
'American moment'.
industry and economy
On the film industry, past and present, and the
information economy we recommend Hollywood
& Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity
1945-1995 (London, BFI 98) edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
& Steven Ricci and the two multivolume
histories History of the American Cinema (Berkeley, Uni
of California Press) and American Screen (New
York, Scribners).
Douglas Gomery's The
Hollywood Studio System (New York, St Martins 86)
offers a wide-ranging analysis of social,
economic, and technological factors. Tino Balio
edited Hollywood in the Age of Television
(Boston, Unwin Hyman 90) an outstanding revisionist
study complementing Janet Wasko's concise Hollywood
in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen
(Oxford, Polity Press 94).
Charles Musser's, The
Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907
(New York, Scribner's 90) consider the industry during
its early stages, a period similar to that of the
current web.
Neal Gabler's Empire of their Own: How the Jews
Invented Hollywood (New York, Viking 93) is
overstated. There's a more cogent analysis in Thomas
Schatz' The Genius of the System (New York, Simon
& Schuster 88); there's a wider social commentary in
Otto Friedrich's entertaining City of Nets (London,
Headline 87).
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