Hollywood's History Films is an innovative and detailed analysis of the film industry's use of history in the 1950s, when 'classical' Hollywood's interest in the past was at its peak. Using original sources, David Eldridge analyses the making of period films as diverse in seriousness and quality as Calamity Jane, The Ten Commandments and The House of Wax, and dissects the 'culture of production' which shaped thinking about history. Eldridge explores the overlapping anxieties that encouraged an unprecedented turn to history, from the ever-present nuclear threat of the Cold...

Exploring cinemagoing and cinema culture, this book considers the 1930s, when going to the pictures was everybody's favourite spare-time activity. From the familiar and magical surroundings of the picture houses themselves to the action and romance on the screen, Annette Kuhn draws on extensive interviews with picturegoers, research in cultural history and readings of popular films of the day to discover how cinema brought a special magic to the daily lives of a generation of young men and women growing up in an austere climate of making-do. From Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald to Fred and...

Hollywood's History Films is an innovative and detailed analysis of the film industry's use of history in the 1950s, when 'classical' Hollywood's interest in the past was at its peak. Using original sources, David Eldridge analyses the making of period films as diverse in seriousness and quality as Calamity Jane, The Ten Commandments and The House of Wax, and dissects the 'culture of production' which shaped thinking about history. Eldridge explores the overlapping anxieties that encouraged an unprecedented turn to history, from the ever-present nuclear threat of the Cold...

This is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Nazi film propaganda in its political, social, and economic contexts, from the pre-war cinema as it fell under the control of the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, through to the end of the Second World War. David Welch studies more than one hundred films of all types, identifying those aspects of Nazi ideology that were concealed in the framework of popular entertainment.

A group of film historians chart a map of 1930s British cinema. They reassess the films, stars, genres, and directors omitted from accounts of the decade, and they evaluate its forgotten and recently discovered films. The book includes assessments of the British shocker and the British musical, popular 1930s genres, and views of cinema and national identity.

Traveling from Warsaw to Blackpool, Marseilles to Madrid, this book investigates the postmodern nature of contemporary Europe's urban life and cinema, and shows how European films represent these cities across old and new Europe. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book engages with diverse films, including ""Luna Park,"" ""Run, Lola, Run,"" ""Trainspotting,"" ""Wonderland,"" and many more. It tackles the issues about postmodernity raised by these films and the changes wrought in European cities over the last two decades under the effects of political change, from the postcommunist era in...

Relations between France and Britain have always been uneasy and ambivalent. But in cinema the Second World War changed all that for a time. Although the two countries' wartime fortunes differed, post-war both were busy reintegrating returning servicemen and prisoners of war and accommodating the changed aspirations of women. Margaret Butler examines these subjects and more in her comparative study of the cinemas of Britain and France during and after the war. Using the concept of community, she shows how cinema dealt with ideas of belonging and alienation, inclusion and exclusion, unity and...

Cinema and the Great War concentrates on one part of the art of the war: the cinema. Used as tool for propaganda during the war itself, by the mid 1920s cinema had begun to reflect the rejection of conflict prevalent in all the arts. Andrew Kelly explores the development of anti-war cinema in, Britain, America, Germany and France from the ground-breaking Lay Down your Arms, made by Bertha Von Suttner in 1914 and Lewis Milestone's bitter All Quiet on the Western Front through to Stanley Kubrick's magnificent Paths of Glory.

In late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, there was widespread fascination with the technological transformations wrought by modernity. Films, newspapers and literature told astonishing stories about technology, such as locomotives breaking speed records and moving images seemingly springing into life onscreen. And, whether in films about train travel, or in newspaper articles about movie theatres on trains, stories about the convergence of the railway and cinema were especially prominent. Together, the two technologies radically transformed how people interacted with the world...