American Cinema / American Culture - 2nd edition

Summary: Ideal for Introduction to American Cinema courses, American Film History courses, and Introductory Film Appreciation courses focused on American Film, this text offers a cultural examination of the American movie-making industry, with particular attention paid to the economic and aesthetic institution of Hollywood.

New to This Edition

• Full chapter on "The Musical," spanning it ...show mores history in film and cultural significance
• New analysis of David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. in Chapter 2, replacing that of Goodfellas
• Expanded coverage of "The Studio System" in Chapter 4 and of "The Star System" in Chapter 5, including a new case study of Tom Hanks' career
• Expanded coverage of the contemporary war film to include Gulf War films and an extensive comparison of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line.
• Extensive updating in the final chapter to reflect the changes in the film industry since publication of first edition
• The Western chapter has a more extensive discussion of Unforgiven, which is compared to Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.
• Film School Generation has the updated work of Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee.
• A new companion Online Learning Center that includes chapter quizzes, a glossary of key terms, links to other useful sites, and more
• Revised version of the Faculty Guide will also be available.

• Reflects a cultural history of American film, focusing primarily on topics and issues rather than on what happened when
• Presents basic concepts in such a way as to encourage discussion, not so much of individual films but of films in general
• Successfully applies the methods and discoveries of "The New Film History" to an introductory level text surveying American cinema (more on this in Preface)
• Detailed discussion of six genres (Melodrama, Comedy, the Musical, the War Film, Film Noir, and the Western), focusing on the point at which each had the greatest impact on the industry, film aesthetics, and the broader American culture

Edition/Copyright: 2ND 05
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company
Published: 07/02/2004

View Table of Contents

Introduction

PART ONE: THE MODE OF PRODUCTION

1. The Emergence of the Cinema as an Institution
2. Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narration
3. Classical Hollywood Cinema: Style
4. The Studio System
5. The Star System

PART TWO: GENRE AND THE GENRE SYSTEM

6. Silent Film Melodrama
7. The Musical
8. American Comedy
9. War and Cinema
10. Film Noir: Somewhere in the Night
11. The Making of the West

PART THREE: A POST-WAR HISTORY

12. Hollywood and the Cold War
13. Hollywood in the Age of Television
14. The 1960's: The Counterculture Strikes Back
15. The Film School Generation
16. Into the Twenty-First Century

Glossary of Terms
Index

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American Cinema/ American Culture - 3 edition

ISBN13: 978-0073386157