American Cinema/American Culture
, by Belton, John
- ISBN: 9780073514291 | 0073514292
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 10/9/2017
Preface
Introduction
PART 1 THE MODE OF PRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 THE EMERGENCE OF THE CINEMA AS AN INSTITUTION
“The Cathedral of the Motion Picture”
Developing Systems: Society and Technology
Edison and the Kinetoscope
Capturing Time
Peepshows versus Projectors
Mass Production, Mass Consumption
A Public Spectacle
Middle-Class Amusements
The Nickelodeon: A Collective Experience
Cleaning Up: The Benefits of Respectability
Spectacle and Storytelling: From Porter to Griffith
The Camera as Recorder
The Camera as Narrator
The “Feature” Film
Presenting . . . the Movie Palace
“Gardens of Dreams”
The Great Showmen
An Evolving Institution
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 2 CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: NARRATION
A National Style
“The Temper of an Age . . .”
A Narrative Machine
Equilibrium and Disruption
Characters and Goals
Problem Solving
Through Time and Space
High Artifice, Invisible Art
Denial and Recognition
Underlying Patterns
Analyzing Film Narratives: Segmentation
A Circular Pattern: Chaplin’s The Gold Rush
Symmetry
At the Center: Imagination
Journey to a New Place: Some Like It Hot
Flight and Pursuit
Narrative Structure and Sexuality
Resolution/Irresolution
Modernist Narration: Citizen Kane
Unresolved Questions
Segmentation of Citizen Kane
Artifice Exposed
Segmentation and Discussion of Moonlight
What's in a Name?
Other Nontraditional Narratives
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 3 CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: STYLE
Film Form and Character Development
Classical Economy: The Opening Sequence of Shadow of a Doubt
The Art of Details
Mise-en-Scène
The Camera
Meaning through Context: Camera Angle and Distance
Systematic Meaning: Some Definitions
Camera Movement
Lighting
Three-Point Lighting
High-Key/Low-Key Lighting
Star Lighting
Sound
Miking and Mixing
The Musical Score
Sound and Continuity
Editing from Scene to Scene
Transitions
Editing and Narrative Structure
Editing within Scenes
Matches
Point-of-View Editing
The 180-Degree Rule
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 4 THE STUDIO SYSTEM
Manufacturing Dreams
Movies and Mass Production
Intangible Goods
The Majors and the Minors
Origins
Vertical Integration
Block Booking, Blind Bidding, and Runs, Zones, and Clearances
Studio Production: From Story Idea to Ad Campaign
Under Contract
A Self-Contained World
The Chain of Command
Studio Style
M-G-M and Paramount
Warner Bros.
20th Century-Fox
RKO
Columbia Pictures
Universal Pictures
Poverty Row
Collapse: The End of the Studio Era
Divestment, Independent Production, and a Changing Marketplace
Starting from Scratch: The New “Studios”
Select Filmography: From Four Sample Studios
CHAPTER 5 THE STAR SYSTEM
The Mechanics of Stardom
Making Stars
Star Power
Persona
Stardom and Mass Culture: From Persona to Star
Stars, the System, and the Public
Stars and Culture: A Historical Survey
The Early Years
Exoticism, Eroticism, and Modern Morality: Stars of the 1920s
Depression/Repression: The 1930s
World War II and Its Aftermath
Stars and Anti-Stars
Different Faces: The Rise of Black Stars
Economics and Contemporary Stardom
Select Filmography
PART 2 GENRE AND THE GENRE SYSTEM
CHAPTER 6 SILENT FILM MELODRAMA
The Origins of Melodrama
Types of Melodrama
The Melodramatic Mode
A Moral Phenomenon
Democratic Virtue
A Social Vision
Melodrama as a Tool of Reform
Politics and Melodrama
Two Film Melodramatists: Griffith and Vidor
An Agrarian Past
History as Melodrama: The Birth of a Nation
Everyman/No Man: The Crowd
Escape and Transcendence
Home as “Seventh Heaven”
The Lure of the City: Sunrise
Sound and Melodrama
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 7 THE MUSICAL
From Narrative to Musical Number
Setting the Stage
Narrative Reality
Musical Reality
Shifts in Register
Chicago
Nine
Narrative and Musical Number: Degrees of Integration
Musical Forms
Backstage Musicals
Busby Berkeley Musicals
Moulin Rouge
Showpeople
Transformation of Space: Performer, Props, Audience
Performer
Props
Audience
Stylistic Registers
From Black-and-White to Color
From Noise to Music
The Operetta
The Astaire–Rogers Musical
The Integrated Musical
The Freed Unit
Singin’ in the Rain
Ideology and the Musical
The End of an Era
A New Era Begins
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 8 AMERICAN COMEDY
Laughter and Culture
Comedy, Repression, and Cultural Dreamwork
From Racism to Social Integration
Comic Disintegration and Disorder
Containing Chaos
Comedy, Class, and Democracy
A Short History of American Screen Comedy
Silent Comedy
Early Sound Comedy
Screwball Comedy
After the Screwball
Alienation and Self-Reflection: The 1960s and Beyond
From Animal Comedies to Ironic Romantic Comedies
Bromance
Beta Male Comedies
Serious Jokes
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 9 WAR AND CINEMA
A World of Extremes
Breaking Rules
A Suspension of Morality
Deviant Narratives: From Individual to Group Goals
Sexual Combat: Masculinity in the War Film
Oedipal Battles
Conventional Homoeroticism
Masculine/Feminine
Back from the Front
Crossovers: War and Genre
The Battle for Public Opinion: Propaganda and the Combat Film
Preaching War and Peace
Mass Conversion: The Politics of Sergeant York
Why We Fight: Education and the War Film
The Vietnam Reversal
Race, Ethnicity, and the War Film
Confl icted: The Psychic Violence of War
The Enemy Is Us
The Aftermath
The 1991 Gulf War and World War II Redux
The Gulf War
World War II
The Iraq War
Mediation and Representation
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 10 FILM NOIR: SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT
Made in the USA
Film Noir: Genre, Series, or Mode?
Noir as Genre: A Set of Conventions
Noir as Series: A Certain Style
Noir as Mode: An Uneasy Feeling
Noir Aesthetics, Themes, and Character Types
Noir Stylistics: A Shift in Perspective
American Expressionism
From Disturbing Conventions to Conventional Disturbances
Noir and the Production Code
Forbidden Subjects, Twisted Treatments
The End of Censorship, the End of Noir?
Innocence Lost: The Literary Origins of Film Noir
Hard-Boiled Fiction
The Detective Hero
Noir and Verbal Wit
Women in Film Noir
Women as Social Menace
Women as Psychological Terror
A Critique of Populism
New Culture, Old Myths
Capra and Film Noir
Film Noir: An Undercurrent in the Mainstream
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 11 THE MAKING OF THE WEST
The American Film Genre par Excellence
Frontiers: History and Cinema
Frederick Jackson Turner and the 1890s
“. . . Print the Legend”
The Literary West
Dime Novels and Pulp Magazines
From Natty Bumppo to Shane
Bundles of Oppositions
Adaptation: When East Meets West
Bowlers to Bucksins
Feminine Transformations
Teaching a Tenderfoot
Women, Civilization, and Nature
On Native Ground: Landscape and Conflict
A Struggle for National Identity
From Wilderness to Garden
A Clash of Cultures: Cowboys and Indians
Native Images, White Values
Out of Time Anti-Heroes
Contemporary Visions, Enduring Myths
Back to the Garden
Unforgiven
Dead Man
True Grit
Periods of Popularity
Ambivalence: Land, Technology, and Utopia
Space: The Final Frontier
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 12 HORROR AND SCIENCE FICTION
Horror versus Science Fiction
The Two Things; Alien versus Aliens
“What If?” or “Oh No!”
What It Means to Be Human
Human versus Animal; Human versus Machine
Borderline Figures
Human versus Nonhuman
A Search for Knowledge
The Horror Film
The Science Fiction Film
Self and Other
The Return of the Repressed
The Threat of the Other
Emotions and the Other
Human Takeover
How We Became Posthuman
Sources of Cultural Anxieties
Horror and Class
The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution
Genres of Science Fiction
Extrapolative versus Speculative
Utopian versus Dystopian
A Brief History of Horror
Classic Horror
Modern Horror
Modern Horror and the American Family
Modern Horror and Gender
A Case Study in Modern Horror: Carrie
A Brief History of Science Fiction
1930s Science Fiction
1950s Science Fiction
1970s Science Fiction: Lucas and Spielberg
Posthuman Science Fiction
A Case Study in Posthuman Science Fiction: Blade Runner
The Posthuman as Affi rmation of the Human
Select Filmography
PART 3 A POSTWAR HISTORY
CHAPTER 13 HOLLYWOOD AND THE COLD WAR
Origins: Communism, Hollywood, and the American Way
Revolution and Repercussion
In the Red: The Depression Era
Antifascists, Populists, and “Dupes”
World War II and Government Policy
Inquisition: HUAC, McCarthy, and the Hollywood Ten
Friends and Foes
“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . .?”
Blacklisting
Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and Senator McCarthy
Naming Names
The Cold War Onscreen
Pro-Soviet Wartime Films
The Anti-Commie Cycle
Us versus Them: Science Fiction and Paranoia
God and Country
Subversions
Chaplin in Exile
In Defense of the Informers: On the Waterfront
Aftermath
The Fight Continues
Win, Lose, or Draw?
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 14 HOLLYWOOD IN THE AGE OF TELEVISION
The Big Decline: Hollywood Loses Its Audience
At Leisure: Recreation in Postwar America
The Role of Television
Do Something! Passive Entertainment versus Action
The House, the Car . . .
. . . The Drive-In
Fewer, Bigger, Wider, Deeper
This Is Cinerama
The 3-D Assault
CinemaScope
Todd-AO and the Theatrical Experience
War with Television, Peace with Its Revenues
From Villain to Partner
Panning and Scanning: Making CinemaScope Fit on TV
DVDs and Widescreen TV
Movie-“Going”
Spectacles
Big Event Pictures
Digital Cinema and Digital 3-D
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 15 THE 1960S: THE COUNTERCULTURE STRIKES BACK
Youth and Challenge
The Kennedy Era
“The New Frontier”
The Civil Rights Movement
Against the War
Liberation: The Women’s Movement
Projections: Women on the Screen
Youth Films: Activism as Lifestyle
“Solving” the Race Problem
On the Offensive: Money, Films, and Changing Morality
Controversy and Conservatism
A New Vocabulary
Live Fast, Die Young: Bonnie and Clyde
Sex, Violence, and Ratings
The Great Teen Pic: Easy Rider
Transformation: The Counterculture Goes Mainstream
Blaxploitation and Beyond
An Emerging Black Audience
A Revolutionary Film: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Outlaws or Role Models?
Split Screen: The Two 1960s
Rejuvenation
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 16 THE FILM SCHOOL GENERATION
The New Wave
The Auteur Theory: Directors as Stars
Cahiers du cinéma and Andrew Sarris
Retrospective: America Discovers Its Cinematic Past
The Critic as Filmmaker
Training Ground: The Rise of Film Schools
The Color of Money: Young Directors and the Box Office
Youth Films and Economics
The Roger Corman School
Exploitation on a Grand Scale
References, Meaning, and Postmodernism
The Art of Allusion
De Palma and Hitchcock
“The Failure of the New”
Schizophrenia and Incoherence
A Postmodern Case Study: Taxi Driver
Reassurance: Comfort, Comics, and Nostalgia
A Return to Innocence
Opposing Visions
Back in Time
Contradictory Impulses
The Brat Pack
The Reagan Years
“This Time Do We Get to Win?”
Physical Culture: Biology as Destiny
Another Generation
Select Filmography
CHAPTER 17 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Contradictions: From the Gipper to Blue Velvet
Reaganite Cinema: “Morning in America”
Regeneration
Nostalgia: Coming of Age in the Past
Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained
Striking Back
Castles in the Air: Reimagining Traditional Institutions
Having It Both Ways
Being All That You Can Be
Oedipus with a Happy Ending: The Return of the Father
Parents and Babies: A Wide Spectrum
Countercurrents
Martin Scorsese: Against the Grain
The Gay New Wave
Spike Lee: Into the Mainstream
Jim Jarmusch and Julie Dash: On the Fringe
Independent Cinema
Into the Twenty-First Century
Hollywood in the Information Age: Game Logic
Computers and Boolean Logic
Fantasy Films
The Digitization of the Cinema
Digitization and Fantasy
Digital 3-D: Avatar
Seeing through Fantasy
Select Filmography
Glossary of Technical and Other Terms
Index
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