American History through Hollywood Film offers a new perspective on major issues in American history from the 1770s to the end of the twentieth century and explores how they have been represented in film. Melvyn Stokes examines how and why representation has changed over time, looking at the origins, underlying assumptions, production, and reception of an important cross-section of historical films. Chapters deal with key events in American history including the American Revolution, the Civil War and its legacy, the Great Depression, and the anti-communism of the Cold War era. Major themes such as ethnicity, slavery, Native Americans and Jewish immigrants are covered and a final chapter looks at the way the 1960s and 70s have been dealt with by Hollywood. This book is essential reading for anyone studying American history and the relationship between history and film.
The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries Americans agree that their nation's origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and a diverse array of ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas. In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution--including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation's history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of the Cold War. By exploring the Revolution's unique role in American history as a national origin myth, Hattem shows how the meaning of the Revolution has never been fixed, how remembering the nation's founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long‑standing American political tradition.
An essay and collection of primary documents on the making of the 1917 film The Spirit of ^76 and the arrest and trial of its producer, Goldstein, for treason. The US government had no use for the glorification of rebellion as it plunged into World War I. Publishes for the first time Goldstein's own 1927 account of the film, the trial, the prison term, and his later suffering. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In Beyond Free Speech and Propaganda: The Political Development of Hollywood, 1907–1927, Jay Douglas Steinmetz provides an original and detailed account of the political developments that shaped the American Film Industry in the silent years. In the 1900s and 1910s, the American film industry often embraced the arguments of film free speech and extolled the virtues of propagandistic cinema—the visual art of persuasion seen as part and parcel of deliberative democracy. The development of American cinema in these years was formatively shaped by conflicts with another industry of cultural consumption: liquor. Exhibitors battled with their competitors, the ubiquitous saloon, while film producers often attacked the immorality of drink with explosive propaganda on the screen. But the threat of censorship and economic regulation necessitated control and mastery over the social power of the cinema (its capacity to influence the public through the visualization of ideas) not an open medium of expression or an explicitly political instrument of molding public opinion. By the early 1920s, big producer-distributors based in Southern California sidelined arguments for film free speech and tamped down the propagandistic possibilities of the screen. Through their trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, headed by Republican insider Will H. Hays, the emerging moguls of Hollywood negotiated government regulation, prohibition, and the insurgency of the Ku Klux Klan in the turbulent 1920s. A complex and interconnected work of political history, this volume also uncovers key aspects in the development of modern free speech, propaganda in American political culture, the modern Republican Party, cultural developments leading up to prohibition, and the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. This work will be of particular interest to film and political historians interested in social movements, economic development, regulation, and the evolution of consumer capitalism in the early 20th century.
The four volumes of Film Study include a fresh approach to each of the basic categories in the original edition. Volume one examines the film as film; volume two focuses on the thematic approach to film; volume three draws on the history of film; and volume four contains extensive appendices listing film distributors, sources, and historical information as well as an index of authors, titles, and film personalities.
Body and Soul explores the work of Robert Aldrich, a producer and director responsible for several notable films, including The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen, Too Late the Hero, The Longest Yard and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Author Tony Williams examines the relationship of Aldrich's films to the Cultural Front movement of the 1930s as well as to the blacklist of the 1950s. He also delineates Aldrich's attempts to follow the progressive ideals of such mentors as Jean Renoir, Lewis Milestone, and Charlie Chaplin. From the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly to the controversial thriller Twilight's Last Gleaming, Body and Soul focuses on the dilemmas--both personal and political--that affect individuals in all of Aldrich's films.
The early history of American settlement, pioneering, and independence is marked by fascinating characters and events often shrouded in legend. Filmmakers have sought to capture these characters, as diverse as Daniel Boone, Francis Marion and Pocahontas, and events, as disparate as the Lost Colony, the Boston Tea Party and the French and Indian War. This comprehensive filmography provides production information and commentary on all films and television episodes set during the years between the first settlements in the future United States and the fledgling country's War of 1812 with Britain. Films are arranged alphabetically, and a detailed introduction provides a thorough overview of the period, with references to films chronicling specific events.
The freedom to think what you want and to say what you think has always generated a pushback of regulation and censorship. This raises the thorny question: to what extent does free speech actually endanger speech protection? This book examines today's calls for speech legislation and places it into historical perspective, using fascinating examples from the past 200 years, to explain the historical context of laws regulating speech. Over time, the freedom to speak has grown, the ways in which we communicate have evolved due to technology, and our ideas about speech protection have been challenged as a result. Now more than ever, we are living in a free speech paradox: powerful speakers weaponize their rights in order to silence those less-powerful speakers who oppose them. By understanding how this situation has developed, we can stand up to these threats to the freedom of speech.
The bestselling author of "Washington's Crossing" and "Albion's Seed" offers a strikingly original history of America's founding principles. Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or political abstractions, but as folkways and popular beliefs deeply embedded in American culture. 400+ illustrations, 250 in full color.
