Hollywood culture has been dismissed as insignificant for so long
that film buffs and critics might be forgiven for forgetting that
for two decades an unprecedented interaction of social and cultural
forces shaped American film. In this probing account of how a
generation of industry newcomers attempted to use the modernist art
of the cinema to educate the public in anti-Fascist ideals, Saverio
Giovacchini traces the profound transformation that took place in
the film industry from the 1930's to the 1950's. Rejecting the
notion that European emigres and New Yorkers sought a retreat from
politics or simply gravitated toward easy money, he contends that
Hollywood became their mecca precisely because they wanted a deeper
engagement in the project of democratic modernism.
Seeing Hollywood as a forcefield, Giovacchini examines the
social networks, working relationships, and political activities of
artists, intellectuals, and film workers who flocked to Hollywood
from Europe and the eastern United States before and during the
second world war. He creates a complex and nuanced portrait of this
milieu, adding breadth and depth to the conventional view of the
era's film industry as little more than an empire for Jewish moguls
or the major studios. In his rendering Hollywood's newcomers joined
with its established elite to develop a modernist aesthetic for
film that would bridge popular and avant-garde sensibilities; for
them, realism was the most effective vehicle for conveying their
message and involving a mass audience in the democratic struggle
for progress.
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