Average customer rating:
- Excellent as a Historical Text Book
- Not very good...
- A very useful beginners guide to American film.
- Movie spoiler
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American Cinema/American Culture
John Belton
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 007004466X |
Book Description
Developed to accompany the Annenberg-funded telecourse American Cinema, and written under the aegis of The New York Center for Visual History, this text offers a fascinating look at the interplay between the movie industry and mass culture in America.
Ideal for film appreciation and film and culture courses found in Cinema Studies, English, History, American Studies, or other departments, American Cinema/American Culture first examines the industry, its narrative conventions, and its cinematographic style.
Following this introduction, students are exposed to the sweep of film history in the U.S. using five genres as the bases for discussion and focusing on the point at which each had the greatest affect on the industry, film aesthetics, and American culture.
Finally, the book concludes with a look at Hollywood post World War II, giving separate chapter coverage to the effects of the Cold War, television, the counterculture of the Sixties, directors from the film school generation, and the trends of the Eighties and Nineties.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent as a Historical Text Book.......2007-03-24
So, I expected this book to be a bit more fun. Unfortunately, the fun element is missing. However, in fairness, the book serves as a thorough textbook for the history of American Cinema and its techniques and various genres. I did enjoy reading about the early studio system and the vast amount of control this oligopoly held. There were some very good critiques and studies of specific films, and a bit about specific actors and actresses. Even a bit about directors. Though packed with information, the book just lacks an entertainment value that it could and should have pulled off based on the subject matter.
The different genres studied include:
Westerns
War Movies
Silent Films
Film Noire
Screwball Comedies
As well as an overall dissertation on Classical Hollywood Style and its various techniques.
Not very good..........2005-03-05
I got this book for a class on the history of cinema. Unfortunately, as the title implies, it only deals with American Cinema. If this is a book for school, check out the class to see if foreign films and film history will be discussed. This book is, again, as the title implies--one-sided. Most of the movies it discusses, gives away crucial plot-points and endings. Some movies that I've been dying to see were ruined in just one or two sentences. This book is also very puffed-up and biased (I don't know any other way of explaining it). Many times throughout the book, Belton seems like James Lipton of "Inside the Actor's Studio", and goes on and on about the greatness of Hollywood, actors, director's, and films with nothing negative to say. It's not at all critical of anything and the author frequently inserts his own interpretation of films into the general text, which I found a little pompous. The book does offer up some interesting facts about the early history and the birth of cinema, but there's something about the way this book was written that makes it hard to stay interested. I think the chapters about film genres exaggerate the importance of some of them, and neglects other genres completely, ie. Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Sci-fi, Animation, Epics, etc. Again, question the instructor and/or look at the class syllabus before siging up if this is the only book for this class. I don't believe this is a comprehensive and unbiased view of cinema and it's history.
A very useful beginners guide to American film........2003-01-08
Years ago I took an intro-level film class at a community college. This was the text for the class. It was accompanied (at least in my class) by a PBS video series that combined film clips with interviews and historical information. Going into the class I had little more than a passing interest in film and film history. But after taking that class, my passion for film has grown exponentially with each year. But back to the book, I really liked this book and highlighted my way from the front cover to the back cover. There are of course limitations to this book. Firstly, it deals only with American films. Secondly, this book barely breaks the 300-page mark - hardly a comprehensive volume. You aren't going to get any information on John Cassavetes here or anything. Now if you have a chance to use this book in conjunction with the PBS films, I think you'll do much better (in fact I think the vids even give a nod to Cassavetes), but even then please note that this material is for an INTRO-level film class, and won't be much good for someone who already knows a fair amount about American film. But with that in mind, the book still has a lot to offer someone looking to introduce themselves to film history.
The first third of the book starts with the birth of film, moves quickly on to the Hollywood studio system, and walks us through the basics of film style (camerawork, lighting, editing, etc.). The second third covers the basics of film genre; there is a chapter about film noir, one on comedies, one on war films, and one on westerns. This second section was particularly useful to me. I could read each chapter, jot down a list of promising titles, hit my local video store, and I was good to go. The third section covers American film after World War II. In this section things seem a little compressed. 110 pages for 50 years of film? A lot is lost on the cutting room floor. But there's lots to dig into all the same. There's a chapter on Hollywood during the McCarthy years (yikes!), one on film's evolution during the emergence of television, a chapter on 1960s counterculture films, one on the film school directors of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally a pretty weak chapter on film in the 1990s. Oh yeah, and at the end of the book there's a handy glossary (in case you're ever stuck on what point-of-view editing is) and a pretty thorough index.
Again, not a book for someone who already has a good feel for film history. But definitely a great resource for someone new to film studies, or for someone who has trouble finding a movie at Blockbuster on Fridays. It did a great job getting me excited about movies, and I imagine its done the same for others.... A good companion to this text (or possibly an all-out replacement of it) is Scorsese's VHS/DVD, "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies."
Movie spoiler.......2002-10-08
This would be a great book to read if you have no intention of watching the films discussed within, or if you've already seen them. On quite a few films, it tells the whole plot, in detail, from opening to end credits.
I also don't like the prose of the author, as he excessively uses sentences "in quotations". The writing structure is very formulaic and boring. The "5 paragraph essay" format is good for high school students learning to write, but imagine an entire book written that way. I can only read it for 15 minutes before losing interest.
The book does, however, provide plenty of examples from a variety of films.
This book is a companion piece to the PBS series by the same name. The series is much more interesting. Don't bother with the book. A much better film text is "Film: An Introduction", by William Phillips, ISBN: 0312258968.
Book Description
Lesbian characters, stories, and images were barred from onscreen depiction in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s, together with all forms of "sex perversion." Looking at the lure of some of the great female stars and at the visual coding of supporting actresses, the book identifies lesbian spectatorial strategies.
Customer Reviews:
excellent film theory .......2006-07-10
applicable to literary theory as well. so well written, especially for a scholarly book! don't miss the conclusion, where you will be blown away. and the intense reading of "all about eve" will take your breath away.
Couldn't put it down.......2006-04-12
This book is fascinating and compelling to read. I am thankful to Patricia White for doing all this research. I can't wait to watch these films.
Book Description
This is the first book to examine systematically Wolfgang Petersen 's epic film Troy from archaeological, literary, cultural, and cinematic perspectives. The collection addresses the most important aspects of the film: its use of Homer 's Iliad and the myth of the Trojan War, its presentation of Bronze-Age archaeology, its modern political overtones, and its place in film history with regard to both previous epics on the Trojan War and the director 's own earlier work.The book explains why, despite or perhaps because of the liberties the film takes with ancient myth, literature, and archaeology, Troy has found huge worldwide audiences. For those who wish to explore the subject further, the book includes an annotated list of feature films and television films and series episodes on the Trojan War.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting.......2007-07-09
INteresting group of essays looking at the movie and the legend that inspired it. My favorite was on Briseis and all the aspects of her personality that were really Cassandra!
Book Description
How films are conceived,planned, and produced leaves a mark upon the films, directly and structurally. The relations between film style and mode of production are, according to the authors, reciprocal and mutually influencing. The authors trace such topics as style, economics, and technology over time, demonstrating how significant changes occurrred in Hollywood from the earliest days through the sixties.
Customer Reviews:
a very interesting study of classical hollywood.......2000-04-08
I love old movies. They have some kind of magic that sadly I can't find in movies today. What this book does is to study the classical years- The classical narrative and how the system, style and people made together these classical movies. The starting point of this book is that almost all of the movies from 1917 to 1960 have the same elements, the same style- the style that today we all referring to when we think of hollywood- the way the story goes, the technical making (filming, editing) that tries to stay unseen and more. The authors choose 100 films from these years,almost all of them are not famous ones or films that made special impact, but films that were made out of the system. Out of these films they show the reader how the hollywood style make us blind to the technical elements and to the similarity of them- because although the norms changed all the time by films that broke the old norms- they all have similar basis. This book is very interesting and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn more about classical hollywood from the films themselves. The only complaint I have (and it's refering to the edition I read, which is from 1985)) is that the pages are divided to columns and it makes the reading a little uneasy, but still worth the reading.
Book Description
Applies the recent `return to history' in film studies to the genre of classical Hollywood comedy as well as broadening the definition of those works considered central in this field.
Book Description
Stephen Prince has written the first book to examine the interplay between the aesthetics and the censorship of violence in classic Hollywood films from 1930 to 1968, the era of the Production Code, when filmmakers were required to have their scripts approved before they could start production. He explains how Hollywood's filmmakers designed violence in response to the regulations of the Production Code and regional censors. Graphic violence in today's movies actually has its roots in these early films. Hollywood's filmmakers were drawn to violent scenes and "pushed the envelope" of what they could depict by manipulating the Production Code Administration (PCA).
Prince shows that many choices about camera position, editing, and blocking of the action and sound were functional responses by filmmakers to regulatory constraints, necessary for approval from the PCA and then in surviving scrutiny by state and municipal censor boards.
This book is the first stylistic history of American screen violence that is grounded in industry documentation. Using PCA files, Prince traces the negotiations over violence carried out by filmmakers and officials and shows how the outcome left its traces on picture and sound in the films.
Almost everything revealed by this research is contrary to what most have believed about Hollywood and film violence. With chapters such as "Throwing the Extra Punch" and "Cruelty, Sadism, and the Horror Film," this book will become the defining work on classical film violence and its connection to the graphic mayhem of today's movies.
Customer Reviews:
Eye Opening.......2004-12-19
This is one of the best books I've read about movies in a few years. Prince looks at the PCA papers for movies from the early talkies to the start of the "ratings system" in the Sixties. He looks at how the films depicted violence, and how they got into trouble with the Code Authority. (Prince doesn't use the word censor, and he shows he has a valid point for this.)
The result is simply eye-opening. It will make you want to see Frankenstein, The Public Enemy, Scarface (1931) and G-Men again. Prince shows how the PCA was especially troubled by violence in horror and gangster films and by edge weapons more than guns. He also shows how "film noir" was a sustained assault on the conventions of screen violence handed down in the Thirties. (Oddly, Prince hardly uses the term "film noir" although the films he mentions: The Glass Key, Brute Force, Kiss Me Deadly, are all from the noir canon.)
Not only does Prince tell the history of American screen violence, but he analyzes the techniques by which filmmakers depicted violence. He never becomes dry or academic as he discusses these films.
Strongly recommended for anyone with an interest in the horror film, gangster movies or film noir.
Book Description
Since the 1970s film studies has been dominated by a basic paradigm—the concept of classical Hollywood cinema—that is, the protagonist-driven narrative, valued for the way it achieves closure by neatly answering all of the enigmas it raises. It has been held to be a form so powerful that its aesthetic devices reinforce gender positions in society. In a variety of ways, the essays collected here—representing the work of some of the most innovative theorists writing today—challenge this paradigm.
Significantly expanded from a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring 1989), these essays confront the extent to which formalism has continued to dominate film theory, reexamine the role of melodrama in cinematic development, revise notions of "patriarchal cinema," and assert the importance of television and video to cinema studies. A range of topics are discussed, from the films of D. W. Griffith to sexuality in avant-garde film to television's Dynasty.
Classical Hollywood Narrative invites students of film, television, and video to reevaluate the basic tenets of the field and introduces film studies to literary scholars.
Contributors. Rick Altman, Richard Dienst, Jane Feuer, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Miriam Hansen, Norman N. Holland, Fredric Jameson, Bill Nichols, Janey Staiger, Chris Straayer, John O. Thompson
Book Description
Do women in classical Hollywood cinema ever truly speak for themselves? In Echo and Narcissus, Amy Lawrence examines eight classic films to show how women's speech is repeatedly constructed as a "problem," an affront to male authority. This book expands feminist studies of the representation of women in film, enabling us to see individual films in new ways, and to ask new questions of other films.
Using Sadie Thompson (1928), Blackmail (1929), Rain (1932), The Spiral Staircase, Sorry,Wrong Number, Notorious, Sunset Boulevard (1950) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Lawrence illustrates how women's voices are positioned within narratives that require their submission to patriarchal roles and how their attempts to speak provoke increasingly severe repression. She also shows how women's natural ability to speak is interrupted, made difficult, or conditioned to a suffocating degree by sound technology itself. Telephones, phonographs, voice-overs, and dubbing are foregrounded, called upon to silence women and to restore the primacy of the image.
Unlike the usage of "voice" by feminist and literary critics to discuss broad issues of authorship and point of view, in film studies the physical voice itself is a primary focus. Echo and Narcissus shows how assumptions about the "deficiencies" of women's voices and speech are embedded in sound's history, technology, uses, and marketing. Moreover, the construction of the woman's voice is inserted into the ideologically loaded cinematic and narrative conventions governing the representation of women in Hollywood film.
Product Description
A very thorough study of blues bass lines covering many different blues styles from Texas swing to jazz and rock blues. Along with specific instruction and analysis, plenty of sample blues bass lines are included. Great for beginners to advanced players, this book will teach you everything you need to know to play the blues. In notation and tablature. This package includes a play-along stereo CD demonstrating most of the exercises in the book. Most of the exercises are recorded with bass and drums only, with the last few lessons adding electric guitar.
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