Regarding Frank Capra

"This wonderful book demonstrates precisely the importance of cultural reception for film studies. Breaking down the traditional boundaries between production, text, and audience, Eric Smoodin's study challenges us to think about the complexity and locatedness of the meaning of the cinema. This book combines rich historical analysis with an accessible style of delivery and an excellent feel for the changing field of American cinema studies. This is film scholarship at its best: rigorous, lively, original."--Jackie Stacey, author of "Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship"

Eric Smoodin is a professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis.