What do we talk or write about when we talk and write about American film history? The answer is predictably complex and elusive. The American Film History Reader acknowledges and accommodates this complex task by showcasing a range of historical writing demonstrating that when we talk or write about film history we, by necessity, talk and write about a lot of different things. The American Film History Reader provides a selective history of American cinema and offers an introduction to historiographic practice in relation to American moviemaking and moviegoing. The Reader is composed of eighteen essays organized into six thematic sections: Industrial Practice Technology Reception Films and Filmmakers Censorship and Regulation Stardom Appreciating that methods and materials change over time, this structure allows the editors to showcase a breadth of historiographic approaches and a range of research materials within each section. Each essay acts as a point of entry into a history that accounts for the essential and inherent commercial, experiential, social, and cultural aspects of the medium. All eighteen essays are individually introduced by the editors, who provide additional context and suggestions for further reading, making it an ideal resource for students of film studies and particularly for students taking courses on film history.

In Paris in the Dark Eric Smoodin takes readers on a journey through the streets, cinemas, and theaters of Paris to sketch a comprehensive picture of French film culture during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on a wealth of journalistic sources, Smoodin recounts the ways films moved through the city, the favored stars, and what it was like to go to the movies in a city with hundreds of cinemas. In a single week in the early 1930s, moviegoers might see Hollywood features like King Kong and Frankenstein, the new Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier movies, and any number of films from Italy, Germany, and Russia. Or they could frequent the city's cine-clubs, which were hosts to the cinephile subcultures of Paris. At other times, a night at the movies might result in an evening of fascist violence, even before the German Occupation of Paris, while after the war the city's cinemas formed the space for reconsolidating French film culture. In mapping the cinematic geography of Paris, Smoodin expands understandings of local film exhibition and the relationships of movies to urban space.

In Paris in the Dark Eric Smoodin takes readers on a journey through the streets, cinemas, and theaters of Paris to sketch a comprehensive picture of French film culture during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on a wealth of journalistic sources, Smoodin recounts the ways films moved through the city, the favored stars, and what it was like to go to the movies in a city with hundreds of cinemas. In a single week in the early 1930s, moviegoers might see Hollywood features like King Kong and Frankenstein, the new Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier movies, and any number of films from Italy, Germany, and Russia. Or they could frequent the city's cine-clubs, which were hosts to the cinephile subcultures of Paris. At other times, a night at the movies might result in an evening of fascist violence, even before the German Occupation of Paris, while after the war the city's cinemas formed the space for reconsolidating French film culture. In mapping the cinematic geography of Paris, Smoodin expands understandings of local film exhibition and the relationships of movies to urban space.

Series Information:
AFI Film Readers

What do we talk or write about when we talk and write about American film history? The answer is predictably complex and elusive. The American Film History Reader acknowledges and accommodates this complex task by showcasing a range of historical writing demonstrating that when we talk or write about film history we, by necessity, talk and write about a lot of different things. The American Film History Reader provides a selective history of American cinema and offers an introduction to historiographic practice in relation to American moviemaking and moviegoing. The Reader is composed of eighteen essays organized into six thematic sections: Industrial Practice Technology Reception Films and Filmmakers Censorship and Regulation Stardom Appreciating that methods and materials change over time, this structure allows the editors to showcase a breadth of historiographic approaches and a range of research materials within each section. Each essay acts as a point of entry into a history that accounts for the essential and inherent commercial, experiential, social, and cultural aspects of the medium. All eighteen essays are individually introduced by the editors, who provide additional context and suggestions for further reading, making it an ideal resource for students of film studies and particularly for students taking courses on film history.

On release in the 1930s, Snow White became a milestone in animated film, Disney production and the US box office. Today its fans cross generations and continents, proving that this tale of the loveable, banished princess and her seven outstanding friends possesses a special magic that makes it both an all-time Disney great and a true film classic.

In this innovative historical examination of the American movie audience, Eric Smoodin focuses on reactions to the films of Frank Capra. Best known for his Hollywood features-including It Happened One Night, It's a Wonderful Life, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-Capra also directed educational films, military films, and documentaries. Based on his analysis of the reception of a broad range of Capra's films, Smoodin considers the preferences and attitudes toward Hollywood of the people who watched movies during the "Golden Age" of studio production, from 1930 to 1960.Drawing on archival sources including fan letters, exhibitor reports, military and prison records, government and corporate documents, and trade journals, Smoodin explains how the venues where Capra's films were seen and the strategies used to promote the films affected audience response and how, in turn, audience response shaped film production. He analyzes issues of foreign censorship and government intervention in the making of The Bitter Tea of General Yen; the response of high school students to It Happened One Night; fan engagement with the overtly political discourse of Meet John Doe and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; San Quentin prisoners' reaction to a special screening of It's a Wonderful Life; and at&t's involvement in Capra's later documentary work for the Bell Science Series. He also looks at the reception of Capra's series Why We Fight, used by the American military to train recruits and re-educate German prisoners of war. Illuminating the role of the famous director and his films in American culture, Regarding Frank Capra signals new directions for significant research on film reception and promotion.

Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first and only book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. Usually running about seven or eight minutes, cartoons were made by major Hollywood studios - such as MGM, Warner Bros., and Disney - and shown at movie theaters along with a newsreel and a feature-length film. Smoodin explores animated shorts and the system that mass-produced them. How were cartoons exhibited in theaters? How did they tell their stories? Who did they tell them to? What did they say about race, class, and gender? How were cartoons related to the feature films they accompanied on the evening's bill of fare? What were the social functions of cartoon stars like Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse? Smoodin argues that cartoons appealed to a wide audience - not just children - and did indeed contribute to public debate about political matters. He examines issues often ignored in discussions of animated film - issues such as social control in the U.S. army's "Private Snafu" cartoons, and sexuality and race in the "sites" of Betty Boop's body and the cartoon harem. His analysis of the multiple discourses embedded in a variety of cartoons reveals the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that animation dealt with class relations, labor, imperialism, and censorship. His discussion of Disney and the Disney Studio's close ties with the U.S. government forces us to rethink the place of the cartoon in political and cultural life. Smoodin reveals the complex relationship between cartoons and the Hollywood studio system, and between cartoons and theiraudiences.

"The "Hollywood Quarterly was so far ahead of its time it seems eclectic even today. Contributors to the journal routinely ranged from those who actually made movies (producer Samuel Goldwyn, animator Chuck Jones, and legendary costume designer Edith Head) to those in academia who were at the time only beginning to comprehend the significance of cinema to 20th-century culture (theorist Theodor Adorno and a who's who of early film studies: Siegfried Kracauer, Lewis Jacobs, and Georges Sadoul). This anthology offers invaluable insight into the early history of film scholarship, education, and perhaps most importantly, industry relations at a most crucial time in motion picture history."--Jon Lewis, author of "Hollywood v Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry

"The "Hollywood Quarterly has a legendary status among film and media historians. It was an important journal in postwar America for its trenchant analysis of forms of communication and new media (radio, television, as well as cinema). An illustrious array of writers contributed and gave it a visibility and importance beyond typical scholarly journals. The anthology includes major figures in the history of film study and also well-known practitioners of the art of cinema."--Dana Polan, author of "Pulp Fiction (BFI Modern Classics)

"The "Hollywood Quarterly occupies a crucially important place in the history of American film criticism. It stands at the juncture between, on the one hand, an artisanal and (in the best sense) amateur scholarship, and on the other hand, a fully emergent academicism. More than any other journal in this country, it initiates the formal, scholarly study of the cinemaas both an industrial institution and an art form."--James Naremore, author of "More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts

Film scholarship has long been dominated by textual interpretations of specific films. Looking Past the Screen advances a more expansive American film studies in which cinema is understood to be a social, political, and cultural phenomenon extending far beyond the screen. Presenting a model of film studies in which films themselves are only one source of information among many, this volume brings together film histories that draw on primary sources including collections of personal papers, popular and trade journalism, fan magazines, studio publications, and industry records.Focusing on Hollywood cinema from the teens to the 1970s, these case studies show the value of this extraordinary range of historical materials in developing interdisciplinary approaches to film stardom, regulation, reception, and production. The contributors examine State Department negotiations over the content of American films shown abroad; analyze the star image of Clara Smith Hamon, who was notorious for having murdered her lover; and consider film journalists' understanding of the arrival of auteurist cinema in Hollywood as it was happening during the early 1970s. One contributor chronicles the development of film studies as a scholarly discipline; another offers a sociopolitical interpretation of the origins of film noir. Still another brings to light Depression-era film reviews and Production Code memos so sophisticated in their readings of representations of sexuality that they undermine the perception that queer interpretations of film are a recent development. Looking Past the Screen suggests methods of historical research, and it encourages further thought about the modes of inquiry that structure the discipline of film studies. Contributors. Mark Lynn Anderson, Janet Bergstrom, Richard deCordova, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Sumiko Higashi, Jon Lewis, David M. Lugowski, Dana Polan, Eric Schaefer, Andrea Slane, Eric Smoodin, Shelley Stamp