"Ladies and gentlemen: THIS IS CINERAMA." With these words, on September 30, 1952, the heavy red curtains in New York's Broadway Theatre opened on a panoramic Technicolor image of the Rockaways Playland Atom-Smasher Roller Coaster--and moviegoers were abruptly plunged into a new and revolutionary experience. The cinematic transformation heralded by this giddy ride was, however, neither as sudden nor as straightforward as it seemed. "Widescreen Cinema" leads us through the twists and turns and decades it took for film to change its shape and, along the way, shows how this fitful process reflects the vagaries of cultural history.

Widescreen and wide-film processes had existed since the 1890s. Why, then, John Belton asks, did 35mm film become a standard? Why did a widescreen revolution fail in the 1920s but succeed in the 1950s? And why did movies shrink again in the 1960s, leaving us with the small screen multiplexes and mall cinemas that we know today? The answers, he discovers, have as much to do with popular notions of leisure time and entertainment as with technology. Beginning with film's progress from peepshow to projection in 1896 and focusing on crucial stages in film history, such as the advent of sound, Belton puts widescreen cinema into its proper cultural context. He shows how Cinerama, CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Todd-AO, and other widescreen processes marked significant changes in the conditions of spectatorship after World War 11 -and how the film industry itself sought to redefine those conditions. The technical, the economic, the social, the aesthetic -every aspect of the changes shaping and reshaping film comes under Belton's scrutiny as he reconstructs the complex history of widescreen cinema and relates this history to developments in mass-produced leisure-time entertainment in the twentieth century. Highly readable even at its most technical, this book illuminates a central episode in the evolution of cinema and, in doing so, reveals a great deal about the shifting fit between film and society.

American Cinema/American Culture introduces the reader to basic issues related to the phenomenon of American cinema. It looks at American film history from the 1890s through today, but it does not always explore this history in a purely chronological way. In fact, it is not (strictly speaking) a history. Rather, it is a cultural history, which focuses more on topics and issues than on what happened when. American Cinema/American Culture plays a crucial role in the process of identity-formation. Films not only serve as texts that document who we think we are or were, but they also reflect changes in our self-image, tracing the transformation from one kind of America to another.

Sparked by a groundbreaking Amsterdam workshop titled "Disorderly Order: Colours in Silent Film," scholarly and archival interest in colour as a crucial aspect of film form, technology and aesthetics has enjoyed a resurgence in the past twenty years. In the spirit of the workshop, this anthology brings together international experts to explore a diverse range of themes that they hope will inspire the next twenty years of research on colour in silent film. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book explores archival restoration, colour film technology, colour theory, and experimental film alongside beautifully saturated images of silent cinema.

This classic anthology provides essential models for analyzing sound stylistics through the detailed study of critical sound films. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton carefully curate major essays from the world's most respected film historians, aestheticians, and theorists, including Douglas Gomery, Barry Salt, Rick Altman, Mary Ann Doane, S. M. Eisenstein, V. I. Pudovkin, Ren? Clair, B?la Bel?zs, Siegfried Kracauer, Christian Metz, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, No?l Burch, and Arthur Knight. Their selections recount the innovations and triumphs of Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Rouben Mamoulian, Dziga Vertov, Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, and Francis Ford Coppola, among many others, and explicate the techniques and practices of sound filmmaking from initial recordings to final theater playback. Film Sound is the ideal companion for anyone seeking both a comprehensive introduction to the form and a rich survey of its historical and global evolution.

Title: Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina.Author: John Belton O'NeallPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP00031901CollectionID: CTRG10140486-BPublicationDate: 18590101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: Includes index. "To which is added the original fee bill of 1791 ... The rolls of attorneys admitted to practice, from the records at Charleston and Columbia, etc."Collation: 2 v.: facsim.; 23 cm

Title: The annals of Newberry.Author: John Belton O'NeallPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP00034700CollectionID: CTRG10140575-BPublicationDate: 18590101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: Includes index.Collation: 413, viii p., 1] leaf of plates: ill., port.; 20 cm

The bringing together of the Antients and Moderns to form the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813 was a tricky matter. How all this came about is not just an English tale but an Irish and Scots one as well. Complexities concerning 'union' included what to do about other masonic orders, especially the Royal Arch and the Knights Templar. For the first time ever this account provides a birds-eye view of the issues and personalities behind one of the big events of masonic history still affecting us today. "In this pioneering and stimulating book, John Belton tells with verve and enthusiasm the story behind the events which led up to the formation of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813. Providing completely new perspectives on this key event in the history of British Freemasonry, John's book will be of interest not only to freemasons but to all those who are interested in the contribution of Freemasonry to British culture and society." - Prof Andrew Prescott, Kings College London

Title: Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina.Author: John Belton O'NeallPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP00031902CollectionID: CTRG10140486-BPublicationDate: 18590101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: Includes index. "To which is added the original fee bill of 1791 ... The rolls of attorneys admitted to practice, from the records at Charleston and Columbia, etc."Collation: 2 v.: facsim.; 23 cm