In Reconstructing American Historical Cinema: From Cimarron to
Citizen Kane, J. E. Smyth dramatically departs from the traditional
understanding of the relationship between film and history. By
looking at production records, scripts, and contemporary reviews,
Smyth argues that certain classical Hollywood filmmakers were
actively engaged in a self-conscious and often critical filmic
writing of national history. Her volume is a major reassessment of
American historiography and cinematic historians from the advent of
sound to the beginning of wartime film production in 1942. Focusing
on key films such as Cimarron (1931), The Public Enemy (1931),
Scarface (1932), Ramona (1936), A Star Is Born (1937), Jezebel
(1938), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939),
Stagecoach (1939), and Citizen Kane (1941), Smyth explores
historical cinema's connections to popular and academic
historigraphy, historical fiction, and journalism, providing a rich
context for the industry's commitment to American history. Rather
than emphasizing the divide between American historical cinema and
historical writing, Smyth explores the continuities between
Hollywood films and history written during the first four decades
of the twentieth century, from Carl Becker's famous "Everyman His
Own Historian" to Howard Hughes's Scarface to Margaret Mitchell and
David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind. Hollywood's popular and
often controversial cycle of historical films from 1931 to 1942
confronted issues as diverse as frontier racism and women's
experiences in the nineteenth-century South, the decline of
American society following the First World War, the rise of Al
Capone, and the tragic history of Hollywood's silent era. Looking
at rarely discussed archival material, Smyth focuses on classical
Hollywood filmmakers' adaptation and scripting of traditional
historical discourse and their critical revision of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century American history. Reconstructing American
Historical Cinema uncovers Hollywood's diverse and conflicted
attitudes toward American history. This text is a fundamental
challenge the prevailing scholarship in film, history, and cultural
studies.
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