Traditions in American Cinema – serie

Explores the development of film noir as a cultural and artistic phenomenon. This book traces the development of what we know as film noir from the proto-noir elements of Feuillade’s silent French crime series and German Expressionism to the genre’s mid-twentieth century popularization and influence on contemporary global media.   By employing experimental lighting effects, oblique camera angles, distorted compositions, and shifting points-of-view, film noir’s style both creates and comments upon a morally adumbrated world, where the alienating effects of the uncanny, the fetishistic, and the surreal dominate.  What drew original audiences to film noir is an immediate recognition of this modern social and psychological reality.  Much of the appeal of film noir concerns its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and capitalist corruption, and its all-too-brutal depictions of American modernity. This book examines the changing, often volatile shifts in representations of masculinity and femininity, as well as the genre’s complex relationship with Afro-American culture, observable through noir’s musical and sonic experiments.  Key featuresTraces the history of film noir from its aesthetic antecedents through its mid-century popularization to its influence on contemporary global mediaDiscusses the influence of literary and artistic sources on the development of film noirIncludes extensive bibliographies, filmographies and recommended noir film viewingConcludes with a reflective chapter by Alain Silver and James Ursini on their own influential studies and collections on film noir criticism

During the Second World War hundreds of Hollywood filmmakers under the command of the legendary director John Ford enlisted in the OSS to produce training, reconnaissance and propaganda films. This wartime bond continued into the post-war period, when a number of studios produced films advocating the creation of a permanent peacetime successor to the OSS: what became the Central Intelligence Agency. By the 1960s however, Hollywood's increasingly irreverent attitude towards the CIA reflected a growing public anxiety about excessive US government secrecy. In Secrecy's Shadow provides the first comprehensive history of the birth and development of Hollywood's relationship with American intelligence. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing literatures and methodologies from diplomatic history, film studies and cultural theory, and it presents new perspectives on a number of major filmmakers including Darryl F. Zanuck, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford.Based on research conducted in over 20 archival repositories across the United States and UK, In Secrecy's Shadow explores the revolution in the relationship between Hollywood and the secret state, from unwavering trust and cooperation to extreme scepticism and paranoia, and demonstrates the debilitating effects of secrecy upon public trust in government and the stability of national memory.

In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism’s most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women's ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women's changing social and political status.

A cultural history of the contemporary Hollywood animated feature, from Toy Story to The Lego MovieExamines critically a range of prominent contemporary Hollywood animated featuresReveals the aspects which make these texts attractive to multiple audience sectionsSituates the genre in its social, cultural, and industrial contextsContributes to current debates on children's mediaUntil the 1990s, animation occupied a relatively marginal presence in Hollywood. Today, it is at the very heart of both the film industry and contemporary popular culture. Charting the major changes and continuities in Hollywood animation over the past thirty years, this groundbreaking book offers an authoritative history of Hollywood animation since the 1990s. Analysing dozens of key films, including The Lion King, Toy Story, Shrek, Despicable Me, Frozen and Moana, it examines the emergence of new genres and stylistic approaches, as well as the ongoing blurring of boundaries between animation and live-action. Identifying narrative and thematic patterns, and developments in industry and style, the book explores how animation in the United States both responds to and recapitulates the values, beliefs, hopes and fears of the nation.

Imagined Life: American Independent Cinema and Transcendentalism examines the prevailing characteristics of American independent cinema and explores its longstanding debt to the Transcendentalists. This nineteenth-century New England group, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, subscribed to an idealistic philosophy based upon an intuitive and imaginative understanding that knowledge transcends logic and empiricism.By analysing a range of American independent films, this book reveals a vital nexus operating in contemporary America between this uniquely North American philosophy and quintessentially American film.Just as the Transcendentalists strategised immersion, observation and reflection and sought empathy as the key to meaning, which came when adherents acquired trust in themselves to comprehend what was morally right, so this volume argues that this same strategy informs and characterises the creative praxes prevalent in recent and contemporary American independent cinema. To the extent that American independent cinema continues to provide a forum for marginalised identities, whether these be racial, sexual, political or even philosophical, this study demonstrates that the conscience of America is sustained and strengthened in independent films that embody Transcendentalist ideas and praxes.

Noir Films, Dark Charisma and the Death of the Ideal Self draws on sociocultural theory to illuminate the development and content of classic noir and neo-noir films, their audience reception and their continuing attraction by linking the origins of film noir to the extended moral crisis of the “noir generation” in America and Europe. It demonstrates that noir films and the neo-noir films that followed are inseparable from the continuing cultural revolution of late modernity.This revolution began with the breakdown of liberal-Christian ideals and the rise of a new model of human nature during the first half of the twentieth century that leveled traditional hierarchical understandings of the self as divided into “higher” and “lower” motives.Film noir is significant because it developed as a form of psychological melodrama in the mid-twentieth century that gave a powerful new cinematic vision and voice to fantasies and impulses, many of them previously defined as pathological, that had been condemned, repressed and denied by the dominant culture.

With the consolidation of ‘indie’ culture in the 21st century, female filmmakers face an increasingly indifferent climate. Within this sector, women work across all aspects of writing, direction, production, editing and design, yet the dominant narrative continues to construe ‘maverick’ white male auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson as the face of indie discourse. Defying the formulaic myths of the mainstream ‘chick flick’ and the ideological and experimental radicalism of feminist counter-cinema alike, women’s indie filmmaking is neither ironic, popular nor political enough to be readily absorbed into pre-existing categories. This ground-breaking collection, the first sustained examination of the work of female practitioners within American independent cinema, reclaims the ‘difference’ of female indie filmmaking. Through a variety of case studies of directors, writers and producers such as Ava DuVernay, Lena Dunham and Christine Vachon, contributors explore the innovation of a range of female practitioners by attending to the sensibilities, ideologies and industrial practices that distinguish their work – while embracing the ‘in-between’ space in which the narratives they represent and embody can be revealed.

With the consolidation of ‘indie’ culture in the 21st century, female filmmakers face an increasingly indifferent climate. Within this sector, women work across all aspects of writing, direction, production, editing and design, yet the dominant narrative continues to construe ‘maverick’ white male auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson as the face of indie discourse. Defying the formulaic myths of the mainstream ‘chick flick’ and the ideological and experimental radicalism of feminist counter-cinema alike, women’s indie filmmaking is neither ironic, popular nor political enough to be readily absorbed into pre-existing categories. This ground-breaking collection, the first sustained examination of the work of female practitioners within American independent cinema, reclaims the ‘difference’ of female indie filmmaking. Through a variety of case studies of directors, writers and producers such as Ava DuVernay, Lena Dunham and Christine Vachon, contributors explore the innovation of a range of female practitioners by attending to the sensibilities, ideologies and industrial practices that distinguish their work – while embracing the ‘in-between’ space in which the narratives they represent and embody can be revealed.

In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism’s most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women's ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women's changing social and political status.

Examines the American exploitation film blaxploitation, exploitation-horror and sexploitation between 1959-1977What is an exploitation film? 'The Style of Sleaze' reasons that the aesthetic and thematic approach of the key texts within three distinct exploitation demarcations blaxploitation, horror and sexploitation indicate a concurrent evolution of filmmaking that could be seen as an identifiable cinematic movement. Offering a fresh perspective on studies of marginal cinema, 'The Style of Sleaze' maintains that defining exploitation cinema as a vaguely attributed 'excess' is unhelpful, and instead concludes that this period in American film history produced a number of the most transgressive, and yet morally complex, motion pictures ever made.

Until the 1990s, animation occupied a relatively marginal presence in Hollywood. Today, it is at the very heart of both the film industry and contemporary popular culture. Charting the major changes and continuities in Hollywood animation over the past thirty years, this groundbreaking book offers an authoritative history of Hollywood animation since the 1990s. Analysing dozens of key films, including The Lion King, Toy Story, Shrek, Despicable Me, Frozen and Moana, it examines the emergence of new genres and stylistic approaches, as well as the ongoing blurring of boundaries between animation and live-action. Identifying narrative and thematic patterns, and the developments in industry and style, the book explores how animation in the United States both responds to and recapitulates the values, beliefs, hopes and fears of the nation.

Examines how Cold War films depicted pertinent issues of American social class and genderFrom the mid-1940s to the late 1980s American film studios enjoyed commercial success in a range of often overlooked genres, employing a new realism to depict social class structures, capitalist desires and the expansion of the marketplace, and to turn American cultural values comically and subversively against themselves. With case studies of the Cold War comedy, the 'rogue cop' film, the brainwashing thriller and the urban romances that defined the 'new woman', 'Cold War Film Genres' explores these myriad productions, redefining American cinematic history with a more inclusive view of the types of films that post-war audiences actually enjoyed, and that the studios provided for them.Key FeaturesProvides studies of emerging film genres and cycles in the Cold War periodExamines how new genres recast gender and class conditions in terms of defining urban and suburban AmericaReveals new directions and successful strategies in Cold War studio production Charts new developments in film narratives that define American social concerns Refocuses critical attention upon the diverse politics of American film culture

This compelling, theoretically informed and up-to-date exploration of contemporary American cinema charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film from Black Hawk Down (2001), through Batman Begins (2005), United 93 (2006) to Olympus Has Fallen (2013). Through a vibrant analysis of a range of genres and films – which in turn reveal a strikingly diverse array of social, historical and political perspectives – this book explores the impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.

Explores the development of film noir as a cultural and artistic phenomenon. This book traces the development of what we know as film noir from the proto-noir elements of Feuillade’s silent French crime series and German Expressionism to the genre’s mid-twentieth century popularization and influence on contemporary global media.   By employing experimental lighting effects, oblique camera angles, distorted compositions, and shifting points-of-view, film noir’s style both creates and comments upon a morally adumbrated world, where the alienating effects of the uncanny, the fetishistic, and the surreal dominate.  What drew original audiences to film noir is an immediate recognition of this modern social and psychological reality.  Much of the appeal of film noir concerns its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and capitalist corruption, and its all-too-brutal depictions of American modernity. This book examines the changing, often volatile shifts in representations of masculinity and femininity, as well as the genre’s complex relationship with Afro-American culture, observable through noir’s musical and sonic experiments.  Key featuresTraces the history of film noir from its aesthetic antecedents through its mid-century popularization to its influence on contemporary global mediaDiscusses the influence of literary and artistic sources on the development of film noirIncludes extensive bibliographies, filmographies and recommended noir film viewingConcludes with a reflective chapter by Alain Silver and James Ursini on their own influential studies and collections on film noir criticism

As Hollywood shifts towards the digital era, the role of the media franchise has become more prominent. This edited collection, from a range of international scholars, argues that the franchise is now an integral element of American media culture. As such, the collection explores the production, distribution and marketing of franchises as a historical form of media-making – analysing the complex industrial practice of managing franchises across interconnected online platforms. Examining how traditional media incumbents like studios and networks have responded to the rise of new entrants from the technology sector (such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), the authors take a critical look at the way new and old industrial logics collide in an increasingly fragmented and consolidated mediascape.

Explores how American directors engage audiences through dialogue that is creatively designed and executedExamining the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, Jennifer O'Meara argues that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that 'talk is cheap'. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, in particular on the films of directors like Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater, this book demonstrates how what we think of as 'dialogue' is really its ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. Questioning the association of dialogue-centred films with the 'literary' and the 'un-cinematic', O'Meara highlights how speech can be central to cinema without overshadowing its medium-specific components, and demonstrates how indie dialogue can instead hinge on an idea of cinematic verbalism.Key FeaturesProvides a framework for analysing dialogue design and execution that can be readily applied to other films and filmmakersHighlights how speech can be central to cinema without overshadowing its medium-specific componentsDevelops new connections between film dialogue, reception studies, independent cinema and auteur studies

The figure of the vampire serves as both object and mode of analysis for more than a century of Hollywood filmmaking. Never dying, shifting shape and moving at unnatural speed, as the vampire renews itself by drinking victims’ blood, so too does Hollywood renew itself by consuming foreign styles and talent, moving to overseas locations, and proliferating in new guises.In Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods, Dale Hudson explores the movement of transnational Hollywood’s vampires, between low-budget quickies and high-budget franchises, as it appropriates visual styles from German, Mexican and Hong Kong cinemas and off-shores to Canada, Philippines, and South Africa. As the vampire’s popularity has swelled, vampire film and television has engaged with changing discourses around race and identity not always addressed in realist modes. Here, teen vampires comfort misunderstood youth, chador-wearing skateboarder vampires promote transnational feminism, African American and Mexican American vampires recover their repressed histories. Looking at contemporary hits like True Blood, Twilight, Underworld and The Strain, classics such as Universal’s Dracula and Drácula, and miscegenation melodramas like The Cheat and The Sheik, the book reconfigures Hollywood historiography and tradition as fundamentally transnational, offering fresh interpretations of vampire media as trans-genre sites for political contestation.

Drawing on extensive archival research, In Secrecy s Shadow explores the revolution in the relationship between Hollywood and the secret state, from unwavering trust and cooperation to extreme scepticism and paranoia.

Explores the connections and tensions between Warner Bros. and the Roosevelt administration during 1933Harry and Jack Warner were among the most important advocates and fundraisers of President Franklin Roosevelt during his 1932 presidential campaign, supporting his New Deal legislation in successful Great Depression musicals like '42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933', and 'Footlight Parade'. But while the Warner brothers posed as exemplars of the New Deal in real life and in their movies, they were attempting to reverse Roosevelt's policies within their studio and their industry.Using newly unearthed primary sources, this ground-breaking book examines the bitter and little known struggle in Hollywood and Washington D.C. during 1933 to create a National Recovery Administration (NRA) code of practice for the motion picture industry. But through the manipulation of New Deal legislation, Harry and Jack Warner, along with other studio moguls, sought to curtail workers' rights and salaries instead of bolstering both sides of the labour/management divide as they were supposed to do under NRA regulations, attempting to serve the economic pain of the Depression as much as possible onto artists and craftsmen, not owners or management. With its tales of Hollywood stars and employees fighting to win a fair share of the proceeds of their labour, the creation of the NRA code makes for an intriguing story of financial survival, political intrigue and backstabbing during the worst of the Great Depression.Key featuresContains extensive primary research on the creation of the NRA's motion picture code, including many new insights about the processGives students of U.S. history a new and entertaining way to examine the legacy of the Great Depression, the Hollywood studio system and President Roosevelt's New Deal programExtensive analysis of the historical significance of the Warner Bros.' Great Depression MusicalsEntertaining stories and insights about Hollywood and U.S. government figures whose names have echoed through decades of American culture and historyDemonstrates how the Warners' aggressive attempts to solidify their industry in 1933 ironically set the stage for the eventual downfall of the Hollywood studio system in the years after World War II

Explores the connections and tensions between Warner Bros. and the Roosevelt administration during 1933Harry and Jack Warner were among the most important advocates and fundraisers of President Franklin Roosevelt during his 1932 presidential campaign, supporting his New Deal legislation in successful Great Depression musicals like '42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933', and 'Footlight Parade'. But while the Warner brothers posed as exemplars of the New Deal in real life and in their movies, they were attempting to reverse Roosevelt's policies within their studio and their industry.Using newly unearthed primary sources, this ground-breaking book examines the bitter and little known struggle in Hollywood and Washington D.C. during 1933 to create a National Recovery Administration (NRA) code of practice for the motion picture industry. But through the manipulation of New Deal legislation, Harry and Jack Warner, along with other studio moguls, sought to curtail workers' rights and salaries instead of bolstering both sides of the labour/management divide as they were supposed to do under NRA regulations, attempting to serve the economic pain of the Depression as much as possible onto artists and craftsmen, not owners or management. With its tales of Hollywood stars and employees fighting to win a fair share of the proceeds of their labour, the creation of the NRA code makes for an intriguing story of financial survival, political intrigue and backstabbing during the worst of the Great Depression.Key featuresContains extensive primary research on the creation of the NRA's motion picture code, including many new insights about the processGives students of U.S. history a new and entertaining way to examine the legacy of the Great Depression, the Hollywood studio system and President Roosevelt's New Deal programExtensive analysis of the historical significance of the Warner Bros.' Great Depression MusicalsEntertaining stories and insights about Hollywood and U.S. government figures whose names have echoed through decades of American culture and historyDemonstrates how the Warners' aggressive attempts to solidify their industry in 1933 ironically set the stage for the eventual downfall of the Hollywood studio system in the years after World War II

Examining the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, Jennifer O’Meara argues that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on the films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, this book demonstrates dialogue’s ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. Questioning the association of dialogue-centred films with the ‘literary’ and the ‘un-cinematic’, O’Meara highlights how speech in independent cinema can instead hinge on what is termed ‘cinematic verbalism’: when dialogue is designed and executed in complex, medium-specific ways.

What is an exploitation film? The Style of Sleaze reasons that the aesthetic and thematic approach of the key texts within three distinct exploitation demarcations – blaxploitation, horror and sexploitation – indicate a concurrent evolution of filmmaking that could be seen as an identifiable cinematic movement. Offering a fresh perspective on studies of marginal cinema, The Style of Sleaze maintains that defining exploitation cinema as a vaguely attributed 'excess' is unhelpful, and instead concludes that this period in American film history produced a number of the most transgressive, and yet morally complex, motion pictures ever made.

The figure of the vampire serves as both object and mode of analysis for more than a century of Hollywood filmmaking. Never dying, shifting shape and moving at unnatural speed, as the vampire renews itself by drinking victims’ blood, so too does Hollywood renew itself by consuming foreign styles and talent, moving to overseas locations, and proliferating in new guises.In Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods, Dale Hudson explores the movement of transnational Hollywood’s vampires, between low-budget quickies and high-budget franchises, as it appropriates visual styles from German, Mexican and Hong Kong cinemas and off-shores to Canada, Philippines, and South Africa. As the vampire’s popularity has swelled, vampire film and television has engaged with changing discourses around race and identity not always addressed in realist modes. Here, teen vampires comfort misunderstood youth, chador-wearing skateboarder vampires promote transnational feminism, African American and Mexican American vampires recover their repressed histories. Looking at contemporary hits like True Blood, Twilight, Underworld and The Strain, classics such as Universal’s Dracula and Drácula, and miscegenation melodramas like The Cheat and The Sheik, the book reconfigures Hollywood historiography and tradition as fundamentally transnational, offering fresh interpretations of vampire media as trans-genre sites for political contestation.

In the late 1960s, the collapse of the classic Hollywood studio system led in part, and for less than a decade, to a production trend heavily influenced by the international art cinema.  Reflecting a new self-consciousness in the US about the national film patrimony, this period is known as the Hollywood Renaissance. However, critical study of the period is generally associated with its so-called principal auteurs, slighting a number of established and emerging directors who were responsible for many of the era’s most innovative and artistically successful releases.With contributions from leading film scholars, this book provides a revisionist account of this creative resurgence by discussing and memorializing twenty-four directors of note who have not yet been given a proper place in the larger history of the period. Including filmmakers such as Hal Ashby, John Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, and Joan Micklin Silver, this more expansive approach to the auteurism of the late 1960s and 1970s seems not only appropriate but pressing — a necessary element of the re-evaluation of 'Hollywood' with which cinema studies has been preoccupied under the challenges posed by the emergence and flourishing of new media.

In the late 1960s, the collapse of the classic Hollywood studio system led in part, and for less than a decade, to a production trend heavily influenced by the international art cinema. Reflecting a new self-consciousness in the US about the national film patrimony, this period is known as the Hollywood Renaissance. However, critical study of the period is generally associated with its so-called principal auteurs, slighting a number of established and emerging directors who were responsible for many of the era's most innovative and artistically successful releases.With contributions from leading film scholars, this book provides a revisionist account of this creative resurgence by discussing and memorializing twenty-four directors of note who have not yet been given a proper place in the larger history of the period. Including filmmakers such as Hal Ashby, John Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, and Joan Micklin Silver, this more expansive approach to the auteurism of the late 1960s and 1970s seems not only appropriate but pressing a necessary element of the re-evaluation of 'Hollywood' with which cinema studies has been preoccupied under the challenges posed by the emergence and flourishing of new media.

In the first book-length study of Romanticism in relation to American film, Michelle Devereaux takes established theories of contemporary American independent cinema as a point of entry, exploring the underlying philosophical and aesthetic Romantic connections between a selection of seven films from four popular filmmakers: Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Primarily dealing with questions of identity, imagination and the relation between self and world, these films also emphasise the anxieties of our own time: the nostalgia for an imaginary past, and the fear of an uncertain future.

In the first book-length study of Romanticism in relation to American film, Michelle Devereaux takes established theories of contemporary American independent cinema as a point of entry, exploring the underlying philosophical and aesthetic Romantic connections between a selection of seven films from four popular filmmakers: Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Primarily dealing with questions of identity, imagination and the relation between self and world, these films also emphasise the anxieties of our own time: the nostalgia for an imaginary past, and the fear of an uncertain future.

This fascinating book examines badfilms; a subcategory of 'bad cinema' marked by incompetence, and typically exacerbated by material poverty and restrictive production conditions. It develops a framework through which the formal characteristics of failure are identified and analysed, and identifies intentionality as central to how badfilms are appreciated and valued as cult texts. Drawing on debates about cult cinema and film form, the book includes a series of case studies of classic 'so bad they're good' films, like Plan 9 From Outer Space, Robot Monster and The Beast of Yucca Flats, investigating the impact of failures in post-production sound, recycled footage, performance and editing in American badfilms from the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it offers ways to consider how we identify and respond to failure, and how failure itself works.