American Cinema / American Culture

PREFACE = xix INTRODUCTION = xxiii PART Ⅰ: THE MODE OF PRODUCTION = 1 CHAPTER 1: THE EMERGENCE OF THE CINEMA AS AN INSTITUTION = 3 "The Cathedral of the Motion Picture" = 3 Developing Systems: Society and Technology = 5 Edison and the Kinetoscope = 6 Capturing Time = 6 Peepshows versus Projectors = 7 Mass Production, Mass Consumption = 8 A Public Spectacle = 8 Middle-Class Amusements = 9 The Nickelodeon: A Collective Experience = 10 Cleaning Up: The Benefits of Respectability = 11 Spectacle and Storytelling: From Porter to Griffith = 13 The Camera as Recorder = 13 The Camera as Narrator = 13 The "Feature" Film = 14 Presenting... the Movie Palace = 15 "Gardens of Dreams" = 15 The Great Showmen = 16 An Evolving Institution = 18 Select Filmography = 20 Select Bibliography = 20 CHAPTER 2: CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: NARRATION = 21 A National Style = 21 "The Temper of an Age..." = 21 A Narrative Machine = 22 Equilibrium and Disruption = 22 Characters and Goals = 24 Problem Solving = 24 Through Time and Space = 25 The Audience's Journey = 26 High Artifice, Invisible Art = 26 Denial and Recognition = 26 Underlying Patterns = 27 Analyzing Film Narratives: Segmentation = 28 A Circular Pattern: Chaplin's The Gold Rush = 29 Symmetry = 30 At the Center: Imagination = 31 Journey to a New Place: Some Like It Hot = 32 Flight and Pursuit = 32 Narrative Structure and Sexuality = 33 Resolution／lrresolution = 34 Narrative Violence: Goodfellas = 34 Rising and Falling: A Quest for Identity = 36 Unconventional Gangsters = 37 Modernist Narration: Citizen Kane = 38 Unresolved Questions = 38 Artifice Exposed = 38 Select Filmography = 40 Select Bibliography = 40 CHAPTER 3: CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: STYLE = 41 Film Form and Character Development = 41 Classical Economy: The Opening Sequence of Shadow of a Doubt = 41 The Art of Details = 42 Mise-en-Scene = 43 The Camera = 44 Meaning through Context: Camera Angle and Distance = 44 Systematic Meaning: Some Definitions = 46 Camera Movement = 47 Lighting = 48 Three-Point Lighting = 48 High-Key／Low-Key Lighting = 50 Star Lighting = 50 Sound = 52 Miking and Mixing = 52 The Musical Score = 53 Sound and Continuity = 53 Editing from Scene to Scene = 54 Transitions = 54 Editing and Narrative Structure = 55 Editing within Scenes = 56 Matches = 57 Point-of-View Editing = 57 The 180-Degree Rule = 58 Select Filmography = 60 Select Bibliography = 60 CHAPTER 4: THE STUDIO SYSTEM = 61 Manufacturing Dreams = 61 Movies and Mass Production = 61 Intangible Goods = 62 The Majors and the Minors = 63 Origins = 64 Vertical Integration = 64 Block Booking, Blind Bidding, and Runs, Zones, and Clearances = 66 Studio Production: From Story Idea to Ad Campaign = 67 Under Contract = 67 A Self-Contained World = 67 The Chain of Command = 68 Studio Style = 70 M-G-M and Paramount = 71 Warner Bros. = 73 20th Century-Fox = 74 RKO = 75 Columbia Pictures = 76 Universal Pictures = 77 Poverty Row = 78 Collapse: The End of the Studio Era = 78 Divestment Independent Production, and a Changing Marketplace = 78 Starting from Scratch: The New "Studios" = 80 Select Studio Productions = 81 Select Bibliography = 82 CHAPTER 5: THE STAR SYSTEM = 83 The Mechanics of Stardom = 83 Making Stars = 83 Authenticity: Actors and Their Talent = 85 Persona = 87 Stardom and Mass Culture: From Persona to Star = 89 Stars, the System, and the Public = 93 Stars and Culture: A Historical Survey = 95 The Early Years = 95 Exoticism, Eroticism, and Modern Morality: Stars of the 1920s = 97 Depression／Repression: The 1930s = 101 World War Ⅱ and Its Aftermath = 104 Stars and Anti-Stars = 107 Different Faces: The Rise of Black Stars = 109 Economics and Contemporary Stardom = 112 Select Filmography = 114 Select Bibliography = 114 PART Ⅱ: GENRE AND THE GENRE SYSTEM = 115 CHAPTER 6: SILENT FILM MELODRAMA = 117 The Origins of Melodrama = 117 Types of Melodrama = 119 The Melodramatic Mode = 119 A Moral Phenomenon = 119 Democratic Virtue = 121 A Social Vision = 122 Melodrama as a Tool of Reform = 122 Politics and Melodrama = 124 Two Film Melodramatists: Griffith and Vidor = 125 An Agrarian Past = 125 History as Melodrama: The Birth of a Nation = 126 Everyman／No-Man: The Crowd = 127 Escape and Transcendence = 129 Home as "Seventh Heaven" = 129 The Lure of the City: Sunrise = 131 Sound and Melodrama = 132 Select Filmography = 134 Select Bibliography = 134 CHAPTER 7: AMERICAN COMEDY = 135 Laughter and Culture = 135 Comedy, Repression, and Cultural Dreamwork = 135 From Racism to Social Integration = 136 Comic Disintegration and Disorder = 139 Containing Chaos = 141 Comedy, Class, and Democracy = 143 A Short History of American Screen Comedy = 145 Silent Comedy = 145 Early Sound Comedy = 149 Screwball Comedy = 150 After the Screwball = 156 Alienation and Self-Reflection: The 1960s and Beyond = 159 From Animal Comedies to Home Alone = 161 Select Filmography = 163 Select Bibliography = 163 CHAPTER 8: THE WAR FILM = 164 A World of Extremes = 164 Breaking Rules = 165 A Suspension of Morality = 165 Deviant Narratives: From Individual to Group Goals = 165 Sexual Combat: Masculinity in the War Film = 167 Oedipal Battles = 167 Conventional Homoeroticism = 167 Masculine／Feminine = 168 Back from the Front = 170 Crossovers: War and Genre = 171 The Battle for Public Opinion: Propaganda and the Combat Film = 173 Preaching War and Peace = 173 Mass Conversion: The Politics of Sergeant York = 174 Why We Fight: Education and the War Film = 175 The Vietnam Reversal = 177 Race, Ethnicity, and the War Film = 178 Conflicted: The Psychic Violence of War = 179 The Enemy Is Us = 179 The Aftermath = 181 Mediation and Representation = 182 Select Filmography = 183 Select Bibliography = 183 CHAPTER 9: FILM NOIR: SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT = 184 Made in the U.SA = 184 Film Noir: Genre, Series, or Mode? = 186 Noir as Genre: A Set of Conventions = 186 Noir as Series: A Certain Style = 186 Noir as Mode: An Uneasy Feeling = 187 Noir Aesthetics, Themes, and Character Types = 188 Noir Stylistics: A Shift in Perspective = 190 American Expressionism = 190 From Disturbing Conventions to Conventional Disturbances = 191 Noir and the Production Code = 192 Forbidden Subjects, Twisted Treatments = 192 The End of Censorship, the End of Noir? = 193 Innocence Lost: The Literary Origins of Film Noir = 194 Hard-Boiled Fiction = 194 The Detective Hero = 195 Noir and Verbal Wit = 196 Women in Film Noir = 197 Women as Social Menace = 198 Women as Psychological Terror = 199 A Critique of Populism = 200 New Culture, Old Myths = 200 Capra and Film Noir = 201 Film Noir: An Undercurrent within the Mainstream = 203 Select Filmography = 205 Select Bibliography = 205 CHAPTER 10: THE MAKING OF THE WEST = 206 The American Film Genre par Excellence = 206 Frontiers: History and Cinema = 207 Frederick Jackson Turner and the 1890s = 207 "...Print the Legend" = 208 The Literary West = 209 Dime Novels and Pulp Magazines = 209 From Natty Bumppo to Shane = 210 Adaptation: When East Meets West = 211 Bowlers to Buckskins = 211 Feminine Transformations = 212 Teaching a Tenderfoot = 213 Women, Civilization, and Nature = 214 On Native Ground: Landscape and Conflict = 215 A Struggle for National Identity = 215 From Wilderness to Garden = 216 A Clash of Cultures: Cowboys and Indians = 217 Native Images, White Values = 218 Cycles: Characters and Types in the Western = 219 Cattlemen and Prospectors = 219 Marshalls and Outlaws = 220 Out-of-Time Anti-Heroes = 221 Contemporary Visions, Enduring Myths = 223 Back to the Garden = 225 Periods of Popularity = 225 Ambivalence: Land, Technology, and Utopia = 226 Space: The Final Frontier = 227 Select Filmography = 230 Select Bibliography = 230 PART Ⅲ: A POSTWAR HISTORY = 231 CHAPTER 11: HOLLYWOOD AND THE COLD WAR = 233 Origins: Communism, Hollywood, and the American Way = 233 Revolution and Repercussion = 233 In the Red: The Depression Era = 234 Anti-Fascists, Populists, and "Dupes" = 236 World War Ⅱ and Government Policy = 237 Inquisition: Huac, McCarthy, and the Hollywood Ten = 238 Friends and Foes = 238 "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...?" = 239 Blacklisting = 241 Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and Senator McCarthy = 242 Naming Names = 243 The Cold War on Screen = 244 Pro-Soviet Wartime Films = 244 The Anti-Commie Cycle = 245 Us vs. Them: Science Fiction and Paranoia = 245 God and Country = 247 Subversions = 247 Chaplin in Exile = 250 In Defense of the Informers: On the Waterfront = 251 Aftermath = 251 The Fight Continues = 251 Win, Lose, or Draw? = 253 Select Filmography = 255 Select Bibliography = 255 CHAPTER 12: HOLLYWOOD IN THE AGE OF TELEVISION = 257 The Big Decline: Hollywood Loses Its Audience = 257 At Leisure: Recreation in Postwar America = 257 The Role of Television = 257 Do Something!: Passive Entertainment vs. Action = 258 The House, The Car... = 258 ...The Drive-In = 260 Fewer, Bigger, Wider, Deeper = 261 This Is Cinerama = 261 The 3-D Assault = 263 CinemaScope = 264 Todd-AO and the Theatrical Experience = 266 War with Television, Peace with Its Revenues = 268 From Villain to Partner = 268 Panning and Scanning: Making Cinemascope Fit on TV = 269 Letterboxing = 271 Blockbusters = 272 Big Event Pictures = 272 Narrowing Expectations = 273 Select Filmography = 274 Select Bibliography = 274 CHAPTER 13: THE 1960s: THE COUNTERCULTURE STRIKES BACK = 275 Youth and Challenge = 275 The Kennedy Era = 276 "The New Frontier" = 276 The Civil Rights Movement = 277 Against the War = 278 Liberation: The Women's Movement = 279 Projections: Women on Screen = 280 Youth Films: Activism as Lifestyle = 281 "Solving" the Race Problem = 283 On the Offensive: Money, Films, and Changing Morality = 284 Controversy and Conservatism = 284 A New Vocabulary = 285 Live Fast, Die Young: Bonnie and Clyde = 286 Sex, Violence, and Ratings = 287 The Great Teen-Pic: Easy Rider = 289 Transformation: The Counterculture Goes Mainstream = 290 Blaxploitation and Beyond = 291 An Emerging Black Audience = 291 A Revolutionary Film: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song = 292 Outlaws or Role Models? = 293 Split Screen: The Two 1960s = 294 Rejuvenation = 295 Select Filmography = 297 Select Bibliography = 297 CHAPTER 14: THE FILM SCHOOL GENERATION = 298 The New Wave = 298 The Auteur Theory: Directors as Stars = 299 Cahiers du Cinema and Andrew Sarris = 299 Retrospective: America Discovers Its Cinematic Past = 300 The Critic as Filmmaker = 301 Training Ground: The Rise of Film Schools = 301 The Color of Money: Young Directors and the Box Office = 302 Youth Films and Economics = 302 The Roger Corman School = 304 Exploitation on a Grand Scale = 304 References, Meaning, and Postmodernism = 305 The Art of Allusion = 305 De Palma and Hitchcock = 306 "The Failure of the New" = 307 Schizophrenia and Incoherence = 308 A Postmodern Case Study: Taxi Driver = 309 Reassurance: Comfort, Comics, and Nostalgia = 310 A Return to Innocence = 310 Opposing Visions = 312 Back in Time = 312 Contradictory Impulses = 314 The Brat Pack = 315 The Reagan Years = 316 "This Time Do We Get to Win?" = 316 Physical Culture: Biology as Destiny = 317 Another Generation = 317 Credits: The Film School Generation and Their Films = 319 Select Filmography = 321 Select Bibliography = 321 CHAPTER 15: INTO THE 1990s: BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME = 322 Contradictions: From the Gipper to Blue Velvet = 322 Reaganite Cinema: "Morning in America" = 324 Regeneration = 324 Nostalgia: Coming of Age in the Past = 325 Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained = 325 Striking Back = 327 Castles in the Air: Reimagining Traditional Institutions = 328 Having It Both Ways = 328 Being All That You Can Be = 329 Oedipus with a Happy Ending: The Return of the Father = 331 Parents and Babies: A Wide Spectrum = 333 Countercurrents = 335 Martin Scorsese: Against the Grain = 335 The Gay New Wave = 336 Spike Lee: Into the Mainstream = 338 Jim Jarmusch and Julie Dash: On the Fringe = 339 Home Alone with Home Video = 341 The Cable Revolution = 341 VCRs and Couch Potatoes = 341 Movie-"Going" = 342 Select Filmography = 345 Select Bibliography = 345 GLOSSARY OF TERMS = 347 INDEX = 355

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