film

Film was arguably the dominant art form and communication medium of last century. Arguably the internet has so far not had a comparable impact and is unlikely to do so until it's a ubiquitous, invisible prsence in our daily lives. 

     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. Eugene Marlow & and Eugene Secunda collaborated on Shifting Time & Space: the Story of Videotape (New York, Praeger 91).

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. 

Erik Barnouw's Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film (New York, Oxford Uni Press 93) and Richard Barsam's Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (Bloomington, Indiana Uni Press 92) are standard studies of that genre.

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) considers 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); for a wider social commentary see Otto Friedrich's entertaining City of Nets (London, Headline 87). Michael Conant's Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry: Economic & Legal Analysis (Berkeley, Uni of California Press 60)examines the fall of the studio system


   next page  (sound)