American Vision

American Vision PDF Author: Raymond Carney
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521326193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Professor Carney analyses Frank Capra's life as well as the broad cultural context of his films.

American Vision

American Vision PDF Author: Raymond Carney
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521326193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Professor Carney analyses Frank Capra's life as well as the broad cultural context of his films.

Meet John Doe

Meet John Doe PDF Author: Charles Wolfe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813513874
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The third film in a celebrated trilogy of socio-political dramas directed by Frank Capra in the late 1930s and early 1940s, "Meet John Doe" is arguably his most ambitious and disturbing work. An introductory essay reconstructs and analyzes the history of production, promotion and reception of "Meet John Doe". A complete transcript of the finished film, extensive annotations concerning original script material and previously unpublished alternate endings are included in this volume, as well as a section of recollections about the film's production, personal correspondance, an excerpt from Capra's autobiography, and a sampling of reviews and contemporary commentaries.

Frank Capra

Frank Capra PDF Author: Joseph McBride
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604738391
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 825

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Book Description
Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra's life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as Joseph McBride reveals in this meticulously researched, definitive biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra's response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, McBride adds a final chapter to his unforgettable portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.

Regarding Frank Capra

Regarding Frank Capra PDF Author: Eric Smoodin
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386267
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
In this innovative historical examination of the American movie audience, Eric Smoodin focuses on reactions to the films of Frank Capra. Best known for his Hollywood features—including It Happened One Night, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—Capra also directed educational films, military films, and documentaries. Based on his analysis of the reception of a broad range of Capra’s films, Smoodin considers the preferences and attitudes toward Hollywood of the people who watched movies during the “Golden Age” of studio production, from 1930 to 1960. Drawing on archival sources including fan letters, exhibitor reports, military and prison records, government and corporate documents, and trade journals, Smoodin explains how the venues where Capra’s films were seen and the strategies used to promote the films affected audience response and how, in turn, audience response shaped film production. He analyzes issues of foreign censorship and government intervention in the making of The Bitter Tea of General Yen; the response of high school students to It Happened One Night; fan engagement with the overtly political discourse of Meet John Doe and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; San Quentin prisoners’ reaction to a special screening of It’s a Wonderful Life; and at&t’s involvement in Capra’s later documentary work for the Bell Science Series. He also looks at the reception of Capra’s series Why We Fight, used by the American military to train recruits and re-educate German prisoners of war. Illuminating the role of the famous director and his films in American culture, Regarding Frank Capra signals new directions for significant research on film reception and promotion.

Frank Capra

Frank Capra PDF Author: Frank Capra
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578066179
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Few Hollywood directors had a higher profile in the 1930s than Frank Capra (1897-1991). He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of the Screen Directors Guild. He won three Academy Awards as best director and was widely acclaimed as the man most responsible for making Columbia Pictures a success. This popularity was established and sustained by films that spoke to and for the times--It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These replicated the nation's hopes and dreams for a national community. He worked with some of the brightest stars in Hollywood--James Stewart, Clark Gable, Jean Arthur, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Donna Reed, and Ann-Margret. Capra's interviews express his connection to the national audience and explore his own story. He was a Sicilian immigrant boy who survived rough-and-tumble beginnings to become Hollywood's most bankable director. In reflecting on his life, almost every one of his films was a parable of acclaim verging on disaster. He spent much of the 1940s in uniform while making films for the War Department. Although Capra was an optimist, World War II and his series of Why We Fight films called his legendary optimism into question. His postwar film It's a Wonderful Life (1946) gave an answer to those questions with an astonishing directness Capra never equaled again. In 1971 he published his autobiography, The Name Above the Title. Many of the interviews collected here come from this period when, as an elder statesman of motion picture art and history, he reflected on his long career. The interviews portray the Capra legend vividly and demonstrate why the warm relations between Capra and his audiences continue to inspire acclaim and admiration.

Frank Capra

Frank Capra PDF Author: Robert Sklar
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781439904893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Frank Capra's films have had a lasting impact on American culture. His powerful depiction of American values, myths, and ideals was central to such famous Hollywood films asIt Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life.These pre-war films are remembered for their depiction of an individual's overcoming adversity, populist politics, and an unflappable optimist view of life. This collection of nine essays by leading international film historians analyzes Capra's filmmaking during his most prolific period, from 1928 to 1939, taking a closer look at the more complex aspects of his work. They trace his struggles for autonomy against Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, his reputation as an auteur, and the ways in which working within studio modes of production may have enhanced the director's strengths. The contributors also place their critiques within the context of the changing fortunes of the Hollywood studio system, the impact of the Depression, and Capra's working relationships with other studio staff and directors. The contributors' access to nineteen newly restored Capra films made at Columbia during this period fills this collection with some of the most comprehensive critiques available on the director's early body of work. Author note:Robert Sklar, Professor of Cinema at New York University, is the co-editor (with Charles Musser) ofResisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History(Temple), and the author of numerous books on film, includingMovie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, and Garfield, andFilm: An International History of the Mediumwinner of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award.Vito Zagarrioteaches film history at the University of Florence and film analysis at the University of Rome III, Italy.

Another Frank Capra

Another Frank Capra PDF Author: Leland Poague
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521380669
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Another Frank Capra offers a new interpretation of the great Hollywood director beyond the patriotic sentimentalist or the cynical opportunist that he has been taken for. Often cast as a cinematic simpleton or primitive, Capra's exploitation of the stylistic and narrative resources of cinema was, in fact, extremely self-conscious and adventurous in ways typical of artistic modernism. His modernism is also evident in his repeated and strong identification with female characters. Informed by recent work in genre theory and feminist psychology, Another Frank Capra shows Capra to be a 'proto-feminist' director whose feminism has been entirely neglected by previous critics.

Frank Capra and the Cinema of Identity

Frank Capra and the Cinema of Identity PDF Author: Malcolm Scott
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781787073739
Category : National characteristics, American, in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This study proposes a new definition of Frank Capra's work as a cinema of identity, focusing on his reflection on American national identity as well as his own positioning as a US immigrant. With chapters on films such as It's a Wonderful Life, the book offers a fresh appraisal of this celebrated director and his often problematic films.

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Songs of Innocence and Experience PDF Author: Magdalena Grabias-Zurek
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443850950
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Songs of Innocence and Experience: Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra is a study of the director’s chosen movies from the perspective of three types of comedies: paradisal, purgatorial and infernal, as assigned by Dante in his Divine Comedy. Magdalena Grabias views Capra’s films in two broader categories of “innocence” and “experience,” where “innocence” represents Dantean paradisal level, and “experience” combines the levels of purgatory and inferno. Such a division constitutes the means to interpret Capra’s filmic universe and to describe the ever-evolving directorial vision of Frank Capra. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate how, in the light of the theory of literary romance as presented by Northrop Frye in his seminal works concerning the subject, the films of Frank Capra fit into the genre of romance. Romantic elements in Frank Capra’s movies can be found in both “innocence” and “experience” categories and, hence, consequently in his paradisal, purgatorial and infernal comedies. However, in both categories, and all three comedy types, the romantic reality of each examined film is structured and developed in a different manner. The book offers an insight into Frank Capra’s films and the complex process of creating his multidimensional romantic universe within them.

The Films of Frank Capra

The Films of Frank Capra PDF Author: Donald C. Willis
Publisher: Metuchen, N.J : Scarecrow Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Discusses films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, It's a Wonderful Life, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It With You, Arsenic and Old Lace, A Hole in the Head, Platinum Blonde, American Madness, Lady for a Day, Pocketful of Miracles, It Happened One Night, Broadway Bill, Riding High, Here Comes the Groom, The Strong Man, and others.