In the 1930s there were close to a billion annual admissions to the cinema in Britain and it was by far the most popular paid-for leisure activity. This book is an exploration of that popularity. John Sedgwick has developed the POPSTAT index, a methodology based on exhibition records which allows identification of the most popular films and the leading stars of the period, and provides a series of tables which will servce as standard points of reference for all scholars and specialists working in the field of 1930s cinema. The book establishes similarities and differences between national and...
In the 1930s there were close to a billion annual admissions to the cinema in Britain and it was by far the most popular paid-for leisure activity. Th...
For the first time, this book tells the 'lost' story of the 1930s Western. Written from a concern to understand Western films primarily as products of Hollywood's studio system, it recovers the context in which Westerns were produced, exhibited and viewed in the 1930s. Peter Stanfield highlights the hitherto marginalised 'B' or 'series' Western, the significance of female audiences, the role of independent exhibitors and of censorship in shaping film production. The book includes illustrations from the following films: Arizona, The Big Trail, Billy the Kid,...
For the first time, this book tells the 'lost' story of the 1930s Western. Written from a concern to understand Western films primarily as products of...
The Big Show looks at the role played by cinema in British cultural life during World War One.
In writing the definitive account of film exhibition and reception in Britain in the years 1914 to 1918, Michael Hammond shows how the British film industry and British audiences responded to the traumatic effects of the Great War.
The author contends that the War's significant effect was to expedite the cultural acceptance of cinema into the fabric of British social life. As a result, by 1918, cinema had emerged as the predominant leisure form in British social life. Through a...
The Big Show looks at the role played by cinema in British cultural life during World War One.
Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet is the first book to explore in detail the vital connections between today's digital culture and an absorbing history of screen entertainments and technologies. Its range of coverage moves from the magic lantern, the stereoscope and early film to the DVD and the internet. By reaching back into the innovative media practices of the nineteenth century, Multimedia Histories outlines many of the revealing continuities between nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century multimedia culture. Comprising some of the most important new...
Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet is the first book to explore in detail the vital connections between today's digital cult...
Why has the Hollywood sound serial received so little scholarly attention? These short, usually weekly films ending in cliffhangers began in the silent era but continued to be extremely popular in the 1930s and 1940s after the advent of synchronized sound. In The Lost Jungle Guy Barefoot explores the popularity of particular serials such as Flash Gordon (1936) and The Lone Ranger (1938), contextualizing the serial in the broader context of American film culture during the Great Depression and Second World War. Barefoot also examines less familiar science fiction, western,...
Why has the Hollywood sound serial received so little scholarly attention? These short, usually weekly films ending in cliffhangers began in the silen...
Much has been made of the importance of silent films in cinematic history, but until now there has been no truly international analysis of these films. In Silent Features, editor Steve Neale brings together a diverse group of internationally known scholars to reflect on silent films and their diverse stylistic, generic, and structural characteristics, as well as the national, historical, and industrial contexts from which they emerged. The essays here focus on fifteen feature-length silent films and two silent serial features. Arranged chronologically and illustrated throughout...
Much has been made of the importance of silent films in cinematic history, but until now there has been no truly international analysis of these films...
