Working-Class Hollywood

Working-Class Hollywood PDF Author: Steven J. Ross
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214646
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This path-breaking book reveals how Hollywood became "Hollywood" and what that meant for the politics of America and American film. Working-Class Hollywood tells the story of filmmaking in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a time when going to the movies could transform lives and when the cinema was a battleground for control of American consciousness. Steven Ross documents the rise of a working-class film movement that challenged the dominant political ideas of the day. Between 1907 and 1930, worker filmmakers repeatedly clashed with censors, movie industry leaders, and federal agencies over the kinds of images and subjects audiences would be allowed to see. The outcome of these battles was critical to our own times, for the victors got to shape the meaning of class in twentieth- century America. Surveying several hundred movies made by or about working men and women, Ross shows how filmmakers were far more concerned with class conflict during the silent era than at any subsequent time. Directors like Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and William de Mille made movies that defended working people and chastised their enemies. Worker filmmakers went a step further and produced movies from A Martyr to His Cause (1911) to The Gastonia Textile Strike (1929) that depicted a unified working class using strikes, unions, and socialism to transform a nation. J. Edgar Hoover considered these class-conscious productions so dangerous that he assigned secret agents to spy on worker filmmakers. Liberal and radical films declined in the 1920s as an emerging Hollywood studio system, pressured by censors and Wall Street investors, pushed American film in increasingly conservative directions. Appealing to people's dreams of luxury and upward mobility, studios produced lavish fantasy films that shifted popular attention away from the problems of the workplace and toward the pleasures of the new consumer society. While worker filmmakers were trying to heighten class consciousness, Hollywood producers were suggesting that class no longer mattered. Working-Class Hollywood shows how silent films helped shape the modern belief that we are a classless nation.

Working-Class Hollywood

Working-Class Hollywood PDF Author: Steven J. Ross
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214646
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book Here

Book Description
This path-breaking book reveals how Hollywood became "Hollywood" and what that meant for the politics of America and American film. Working-Class Hollywood tells the story of filmmaking in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a time when going to the movies could transform lives and when the cinema was a battleground for control of American consciousness. Steven Ross documents the rise of a working-class film movement that challenged the dominant political ideas of the day. Between 1907 and 1930, worker filmmakers repeatedly clashed with censors, movie industry leaders, and federal agencies over the kinds of images and subjects audiences would be allowed to see. The outcome of these battles was critical to our own times, for the victors got to shape the meaning of class in twentieth- century America. Surveying several hundred movies made by or about working men and women, Ross shows how filmmakers were far more concerned with class conflict during the silent era than at any subsequent time. Directors like Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and William de Mille made movies that defended working people and chastised their enemies. Worker filmmakers went a step further and produced movies from A Martyr to His Cause (1911) to The Gastonia Textile Strike (1929) that depicted a unified working class using strikes, unions, and socialism to transform a nation. J. Edgar Hoover considered these class-conscious productions so dangerous that he assigned secret agents to spy on worker filmmakers. Liberal and radical films declined in the 1920s as an emerging Hollywood studio system, pressured by censors and Wall Street investors, pushed American film in increasingly conservative directions. Appealing to people's dreams of luxury and upward mobility, studios produced lavish fantasy films that shifted popular attention away from the problems of the workplace and toward the pleasures of the new consumer society. While worker filmmakers were trying to heighten class consciousness, Hollywood producers were suggesting that class no longer mattered. Working-Class Hollywood shows how silent films helped shape the modern belief that we are a classless nation.

Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking

Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking PDF Author: Barbara Tepa Lupack
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253010721
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A history of the early 1900s southern-born, white filmmaker and the silent films he created for black audiences. In the early 1900s, so-called race filmmakers set out to produce black-oriented pictures to counteract the racist caricatures that had dominated cinema from its inception. Richard E. Norman, a southern-born white filmmaker, was one such pioneer. From humble beginnings as a roving “home talent” filmmaker, recreating photoplays that starred local citizens, Norman would go on to produce high-quality feature-length race pictures. Together with his better-known contemporaries Oscar Micheaux and Noble and George Johnson, Richard E. Norman helped to define early race filmmaking. Making use of unique archival resources, including Norman’s personal and professional correspondence, detailed distribution records, and newly discovered original shooting scripts, this book offers a vibrant portrait of race in early cinema. “Grounded in impressive archival research, Barbara Lupack’s book offers a long overdue history of Richard E. Norman and the filmmaking company he established early in the twentieth century. Lupack’s ability to describe Norman’s films—and the work that went into their production—reanimates them for readers and stresses their role in shaping early African American cinematic representation.” —Paula Massood, author of Making a Promised Land: Harlem in 20th-Century Photography and Film “Thoroughly researched and crisply written . . . The first book-length work on Norman, Lupack’s monograph clearly delineates the Norman Company’s importance . . . [Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking’s] most profound contribution lies, perhaps, in how it illuminates the fraught economics of race filmmaking.” —Journal of American History “Lupack’s book provides a wealth of archival information about this vibrant moment in film history . . . [This] is a solid contribution to regional film studies and race film business practice, and will appeal to scholars, students, and film-buffs alike.” —Black Camera

Hugo Munsterberg on Film

Hugo Munsterberg on Film PDF Author: Hugo Münsterberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135353271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Hugo Münsterberg's The Photoplay (1916) is one of the first and most important early works of film theory. Münsterberg's work on the emerging art of cinema remains a key document for film scholars, but it has long been out of print. In this new edition, Allan Langdale provides a critical introduction to the seminal text and collects numerous hard-to-find writings on film by Münsterberg.

Screenwriting

Screenwriting PDF Author: Andrew Horton
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
ISBN: 9781784530211
Category : Motion picture authorship
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Screenwriting is the second of the 'Behind the Silver Screen' series of ten volumes, which will together cover for the first time the full art, craft, business and history of filmmaking from inception to reality. Screenwriting is where a movie begins. Written by screenwriters and critics, this innovative book is devoted to the art of the screenwriter and the business of screenwriting from Hollywood's silent beginnings to the global multimedia marketplace. Focusing on key screenplays that changed the game in Hollywood and beyond and on films from The Birth of a Nation to Chinatown and Lost in Translation, the book reveals the profound ways in which screenwriters contribute to films, as they try to capture the hopes and dreams, the nightmares and concerns of the period in which they are writing. It is compelling reading for film lovers, screenwriters & film students, industry professionals - anyone interested in the creative collaboration that creates the movies we see on the screen.

Any Gun Can Play

Any Gun Can Play PDF Author: Kevin Grant
Publisher: FAB Press
ISBN: 9781903254615
Category : Spaghetti Westerns
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Sergio Leone's famed Dollars trilogy sparked a gold-rush, as a legion of European film-makers went on to make in excess of 600 Westerns in just 10 years. Massively popular, stylish and baroque, Euro-Westerns became box-office sensations around the world and their influence can still be felt today. Any Gun Can Play spotlights the many actors, directors and poster artists who changed the look of the Western and dragged it into the modern age. Complete with a foreword by Euro-Western legend Franco Nero.

Film Remakes

Film Remakes PDF Author: NA NA
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137081686
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This is the first book to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of the phenomenon of cinematic remaking. Drawing upon recent theories of genre and intertextuality, Film Remakes describes remaking as both an elastic concept and a complex situation, one enabled and limited by the interrelated roles and practices of industry, critics, and audiences. This approach to remaking is developed across three broad sections: the first deals with issues of production, including commerce and authors; the second considers genre, plots, and structures; and the third investigates issues of reception, including audiences and institutions.

The Sounds of Early Cinema

The Sounds of Early Cinema PDF Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253108708
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. "Silent cinema" may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910). Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov.

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter PDF Author: Friedrich A. Kittler
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804732338
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
On history of communication

The Photoplay

The Photoplay PDF Author: Hugo Munsterberg
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1776583892
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
In the early years of the twentieth century, both psychology and motion pictures were just beginning to emerge as significant cultural forces. Published in 1916, this fascinating work from prominent psychologist Hugo Munsterberg analyzes early films from a psychological point of view.

My German Question

My German Question PDF Author: Peter Gay
Publisher: Yale.ORIM
ISBN: 0300133146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
“Not only a memoir, it’s also a fierce reply to those who criticized German-Jewish assimilation and the tardiness of many families in leaving Germany” (Publishers Weekly). In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939—“the story,” says Peter Gay, “of a poisoning and how I dealt with it.” With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings—then and now—toward Germany its people. Gay relates that the early years of the Nazi regime were relatively benign for his family, yet even before the events of 1938–39, culminating in Kristallnacht, they were convinced they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family’s mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay’s account—marked by candor, modesty, and insight—adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry. “Not a single paragraph is superfluous. His inquiry rivets without let up, powered by its unremitting candor.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “[An] eloquent memoir.” —The Wall Street Journal “A moving testament to the agony the author experienced.” —Chicago Tribune “[A] valuable chronicle of what life was like for those who lived through persecution and faced execution.” —Choice