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W. W. Norton & Company : College Books

American Film: A History

Contents

  • Chapter 1: Early Cinema (1893–1914)
  • Pre-cinema
    • Photography
    • Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne Jules Marey
    • The Edison Manufacturing Company and America’s First Films
    • The Lumière Brothers and Robert Paul: Filmmaking Begins in Europe
    • April 23, 1896: Edison’s Vitascope Debuts
    • Commercial Film Exhibition and The Birth of the Movie House
  • An American Film Industry
    • The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
    • The Motion Picture Patents Company Trust
    • The Move West
    • Movie Moguls and Movie Stars
    • Early Film Censorship
    • The Mutual Case: Movies and the First Amendment
  • Major Filmmakers in Early American Cinema
    • Georges Méliès and the French Invasion
    • Edwin S. Porter
    • D. W. Griffith
    • Mack Sennett and Early Film Comedy
    • Women and Early Cinema
  • Chapter 2: The Silent Era (1915–1928)
  • A Studio Industry Is Born
    • Movie Stars: Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, and Rudolph Valentino
    • Movie-Star Scandals
    • Will Hays and the MPPDA
  • Moviemaking and Moviemakers
    • D. W. Griffith
    • Cecil B. DeMille
    • Erich von Stroheim
    • Thomas H. Ince
    • F. W. Murnau
    • Studio Filmmaking
    • Women behind the Scenes
  • The Golden Age of Film Comedy
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • Buster Keaton
    • Harold Lloyd
    • Laurel and Hardy
  • Chapter 3: Technical Innovation and Industrial Transformation (1927–1938)
  • Technical Innovations: Sound and Color
    • Warner Bros. and the Conversion to Sound
    • Early Experiments with Sound on Film
    • Early Silent-Sound Hybrids
    • The Jazz Singer: Making the Transition to Sound Necessary
    • Tinting and Painting by Hand
    • Technicolor
  • The Studio System
    • The Contract System: A System of Contracts
    • Studio Producers and Studio Styles
    • Irving Thalberg, Boy Wonder
    • Darryl Zanuck and the Warner Bros. House Style
  • Censorship: Regulating Film Content
    • 1927: The List of “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls”
    • 1930: The Motion Picture Production Code
    • 1930–1934: The Studios Resist the Code
    • 1933: The Catholic Legion of Decency
    • 1934: The Production Code Administration
  • Genre And Studio Hollywood
    • The Gangster Film
    • Melodrama
    • Horror Films
    • The Musical
    • Early Sound Comedy
    • Romantic Comedies
  • Chapter 4: Hollywood in Transition (1939–1945)
  • 1939–1941: The Last Best Years
    • Gone With the Wind
    • Citizen Kane
  • A World At War
    • WW II Hollywood
    • Selling the War
    • Topical Features
  • Genre in Wartime Hollywood
    • The Woman’s Picture
    • Studio Comedies: Preston Sturges
    • Lowbrow Comedies: Abbot and Costello, Hope and Crosby
    • Early Film Noir
  • Transcending Genre: Three Key Films
    • Casablanca
    • Meet Me in St. Louis
    • The Best Years of Our Lives
  • Chapter 5: Adjusting to a Postwar America (1945–1955)
  • Reinventing Hollywood
    • The Paramount Decision
    • The Hollywood Blacklist
  • Genre: Film Noir
    • The Noir Visual Style
    • Narrative Form and Ideology in Film Noir
    • Noir and the Hollywood Left
  • Transcending Genre, Transcending Hollywood
    • Orson Welles
    • Howard Hawks
    • Billy Wilder
    • Elia Kazan
    • Max Ophüls, Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and Douglas Sirk
  • Behind the Camera, Behind the Scenes: Women in Hollywood
    • Women Screenwriters
    • Ida Lupino
  • Chapter 6: Moving toward a New Hollywood (1955–1967)
  • Industry Shakeup
    • Movies versus Television
    • The Big Hollywood Buyout
    • Revisiting and Revising the Production Code
    • Movie Censorship and the Courts
  • Genre
    • The Western
    • John Ford and John Wayne
    • Teenagers and Teen Movies
  • Transcending Genre / Transcending Hollywood
    • Alfred Hitchcock
    • Jerry Lewis
    • From Marilyn Monroe to Doris Day
  • Two Key Films
    • Bonnie and Clyde
    • The Graduate
  • Chapter 7: A Hollywood Renaissance (1968–1980)
  • Reinventing Hollywood
    • The 1968 Voluntary Film Rating System
    • The Box-Office Recovery
    • The Astonishing Popularity of Pornography
  • Major Films And Filmmakers of the Auteur Renaissance
    • Easy Rider
    • The Godfather, Parts I and II
    • Chinatown
    • Martin Scorsese
    • Robert Altman
    • Stanley Kubrick
    • William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, and Terrence Malick
    • George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
    • The End of Auteurism: Apocalypse Now and Heaven’s Gate
  • American Genre Cinema
    • The Ultraviolent Western
    • The New American Horror Film
    • Comedy Stars and Comedy Films
    • Blaxploitation
    • The New Woman’s Film
  • Chapter 8: A New New Hollywood (1982–1999)
  • A New Corporate Hollywood
    • The Kerkorian Case
    • The Screen Actors Guild Strike
    • The Battle over the VCR
    • The Capitol Service Case
    • The Time Warner Merger
  • Genres and Trends
    • The Action-Adventure Film
    • Comic-Book Adaptations
    • Science Fiction
    • Comedy
  • Auteur Filmmakers
    • Steven Spielberg and George Lucas
    • Oliver Stone
    • Spike Lee
    • Tim Burton, David Lynch, and Adrian Lyne
    • Quentin Tarantino
  • Independents and Independence
    • Independent Auteurs: Joel and Ethan Coen, John Sayles, and Steven Soderbergh
    • Independent Women Making Movies
  • Chapter 9: The End of Cinema As We Know It (1999–2006)
  • The New New Hollywood
    • Consolidation and Conglomeration
    • New Marketing Strategies for a New Film Market
    • Release Stategies
    • New Exhibition Formats and Technologies
  • Films and Filmmakers: Industry Trends
    • Blockbusters and Box-Office Hits
    • Twenty-First Century Auteurs
    • Independents and Independence

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