Film History: An Introduction

Kristin Thompson is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of WisconsinMadison, where she earned her Ph.D. Her books include Eisensteins Ivan the Terrible (1981), Exporting Entertainment: Americas Place in World Film Markets 19011934 (1985), Breaking the GlassArmor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (1988), Storytelling in the New Hollywood:Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (1999), Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film after World War I (2005), and The FrodoFranchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood (2007).



David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of WisconsinMadison. He also holds a Hilldale Professorship in the Humanities and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen. He has also held the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. His books include Narration in the Fiction Film (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), On the History of Film Style (Harvard University Press, 1997), Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Harvard University Press, 2000; 2nd ed., Irvington Way Institute Press, 2011), Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging(University of California Press, 2005), The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (University of California Press, 2006), The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed MovieStorytelling (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He has also written books on Carl Theodor Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Sergei Eisenstein, digital cinema, and Hong Kong film.

Preface

Introduction: Film History and How It Is Done

Why Do We Care About Old Movies?

What do Film Historians Do?

Our Approach to Film History

History as Story

Part One: Early Cinema

1 The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema, 1880s-1904

The Invention of the Cinema

Early Filmmaking and Exhibition

2 The International Expansion of the Cinema, 1905-1912

Film Production in Europe

The Struggle for the Expanding American Film Industry

The Problem of Narrative Clarity

3 National Cinemas, Hollywood Classicism and World War I, 1913-1919

The American Takeover of World Markets

The Rise of National Cinemas

The Classical Hollywood Cinema

Small Producing Countries

Part Two: The Late Silent Era, 1919-1929

4 France in the 1920s

The French Film Industry after World War I

Major Postwar Genres

The French Impressionist Movement

The End of French Impressionism

5 Germany in the 1920s

The German Situation after World War I

Genres and Styles of German Postwar Cinema

Major Changes in the Mid- to Late 1920s

The End of the Expressionist Movement

New Objectivity

Export and Classical Style

6 Soviet Cinema in the 1920s

The Hardships of War Communism, 1918-1920

Recovery under the New Economic Policy, 1921-1924

Increased State Control and the Montage Movement, 1925-1930

Other Soviet Films

The Five-Year Plan and the End of the Montage Movement

7 The Late Silent Era in Hollywood, 1920-1928

Theater Chains and the Structure of the Industry

The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America

Studio Filmmaking

Films for African-American Audiences

The Animated Part of the Program

8 International Trends of the 1920s

"Film Europe"

The "International Style"

Film Experiments Outside the Mainstream Industry

Documentary Features Gain Prominence

Commercial Filmmaking Internationally

Part Three: The Development of Sound Cinema, 1926-1945

9 The Introduction of Sound

Sound in the United States

Germany Challenges Hollywood

The USSR Pursues Its Own Path to Sound

The International Adoption of Sound

10 The Hollywood Studio System, 1930-1945

The New Structure of the Film Industry

Exhibition Practice in the 1930s

Continued Innovation in Hollywood

Major Directors

Genre Innovations and Transformations

Animation and the Studio System

11 Other Studio Systems

Quota Quickies and Wartime Pressures: The British Studios

Innovation within an Industry: The Studio System of Japan

India: An Industry Built on Music

China: Filmmaking Caught between Left and Right

12 Cinema and the State: The USSR, Germany, and Italy, 1930-1945

The Soviet Union: Socialist Realism and World War II

The German Cinema under the Nazis

Italy: Propaganda versus Entertainment

13 France: Poetic Realism, the Popular Front and the Occupation, 1930-1945

The Industry and Filmmaking during t...