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"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.
When widescreen technology was introduced to filmmaking in 1953, it revolutionized the visual framework and aesthetic qualities of cinema. Many modern moviegoers are already familiar with the widescreen revolution, which recently made its way from the big screen to the home screen. What remains hidden, however, is the rich history of this technology and its origins. Letterboxed: The Evolution of Widescreen Cinema tracks the development of widescreen cinema from the early twentieth century to contemporary technologies such as video games and IMAX. Examining early filmmakers such as buster Keaton and D.W. Griffith and genre pioneers like Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk, Harper Cossar explains how directors use wider aspect ratios to enhance their creative visions. Whereas previous analyses of widescreen cinema have pointed out the format capacity to increase an audience's level of engagement during viewing, or have heralded it as an end to the era of montage by analyzing a few canonical films. Cossar's new assessment of widescreen technology offers deeper insights into the aesthetic implications of the format. Letterboxed examines the impact of widescreen cinema by broadening the scope of films included in the discussion and by focusing specifically on classical Hollywood genre films directed by recognized auteurs. By examining the differences between widescreen format and its predecessor, the Academy ration, Cossar distinguishes between the physical and stylistic ruptures prompted by widescreen technology. Not only did widescreen offer an alternative to the traditional aspect ratio of the screen, but it also introduced new methods of working within cinematic tropes to utilize space and action more effectively. Cossar examines films throughout the history of cinema, uncovering the trends and changes that result from the use of widescreen, and also discusses the flexibility of widescreen methods as applied in various film genres. He reviews existing scholarship and offers his own insights about the origins of this technology, its impact, and its more recent uses in both live-action and animated film.
Hello, Dolly!, Lawrence of Arabia, Sound of Music--200+ more. Enormous detail on CinemaScope, VistaVision, Cinerama, Todd-AO, Panavision, CinemaScope-55, Technirama, Thrillarama, Aromatama, Smell-O-Vision, stereophonic and special sound processes, even Soviet 70mm! Huge filmography, exhaustive credits. Much data never before published.
From the very beginning of cinema, there have been amateur filmmakers at work. It wasn’t until Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923, however, that amateur moviemaking became a widespread reality, and by the 1950s, over a million Americans had amateur movie cameras. In Amateur Cinema, Charles Tepperman explores the meaning of the “amateur” in film history and modern visual culture. In the middle decades of the twentieth century—the period that saw Hollywood’s rise to dominance in the global film industry—a movement of amateur filmmakers created an alternative world of small-scale movie production and circulation. Organized amateur moviemaking was a significant phenomenon that gave rise to dozens of clubs and thousands of participants producing experimental, nonfiction, or short-subject narratives. Rooted in an examination of surviving films, this book traces the contexts of “advanced” amateur cinema and articulates the broad aesthetic and stylistic tendencies of amateur films.
A comprehensive overview of the film industry in Hollywood today, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema brings together leading international cinema scholars to explore the technology, institutions, film makers and movies of contemporary American film making.
Leading international scholars consider the films and legacy of Howard Hawks. Diverse contributions consider Hawks' work in relation to issues of gender, genre and relationships between the sexes, discuss key films including Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep and Red River, and address Hawks' visual style and the importance of musicality in his film-making.
What is history? How do we represent it? How do our notions of history change over time? The essays in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media probe the roles that cinema and television play in altering and complicating our understanding of historical events. The book brings together representative examples of how both media critics and historians write about history as it is created and disseminated through film and television. The essays explore what is at stake culturally and politically in media history and how this form of history-making is different from traditional historiography. The volume is divided into four parts--Regarding History; History as Trauma; History, Fiction, and Postcolonial Memory; and History and Television--that progressively deepen our understanding of just how complex the issues are. Essays by top scholars analyze many different kinds of film: historical film, documentary, costume drama, and heritage films. The section on television is equally broad, examining phenomena as diverse as news broadcasts and Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War. Contributors are Mbye Cham, George F. Custen, Mary Ann Doane, Richard Dienst, Taylor Downing, Gary Edgerton, Naomi Greene, Miriam Bratu Hansen, Sue Harper, Sumiko Higashi, Anton Kaes, Marcia Landy, Shawn Rosenheim, Robert A. Rosenstone, Pierre Sorlin, Maria Wyke, and Ismail Xavier.
Cinematic Appeals follows the effect of technological innovation on the cinema experience, specifically the introduction of widescreen and stereoscopic 3D systems in the 1950s, the rise of digital cinema in the 1990s, and the transition to digital 3D since 2005. Widescreen cinema promised to draw the viewer into the world of the screen, enabling larger-than-life close-ups of already larger-than-life actors. This technology fostered the illusion of physically entering a film, enhancing the semblance of realism. Alternatively, the digital era was less concerned with the viewer's physical response and more with information flow, awe, and the reevaluation of spatiality and embodiment. This study ultimately shows how cinematic technology and the human experience shape and respond to each other over time.
A stimulating overview of the intellectual arguments and critical debates involved in the study of British and Irish cinemas British and Irish film studies have expanded in scope and depth in recent years, prompting a growing number of critical debates on how these cinemas are analysed, contextualized, and understood. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema addresses arguments surrounding film historiography, methods of textual analysis, critical judgments, and the social and economic contexts that are central to the study of these cinemas. Twenty-nine essays from many of the most prominent writers in the field examine how British and Irish cinema have been discussed, the concepts and methods used to interpret and understand British and Irish films, and the defining issues and debates at the heart of British and Irish cinema studies. Offering a broad scope of commentary, the Companion explores historical, cultural and aesthetic questions that encompass over a century of British and Irish film studies—from the early years of the silent era to the present-day. Divided into five sections, the Companion discusses the social and cultural forces shaping British and Irish cinema during different periods, the contexts in which films are produced, distributed and exhibited, the genres and styles that have been adopted by British and Irish films, issues of representation and identity, and debates on concepts of national cinema at a time when ideas of what constitutes both ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ cinema are under question. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema is a valuable and timely resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of film, media, and cultural studies, and for those seeking contemporary commentary on the cinemas of Britain and Ireland.
This collection of exciting new research on British cinema of the 1960s reconsiders and reframes the film culture that emerged from that tumultuous decade. Challenging assumptions around Sixties stardom, the book focuses on creative collaboration and the contribution of production personnel beyond the director, and discusses how cultural change is reflected in both film style and cinematic themes. With perspectives and insights from established scholars and new critical voices, Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered draws on under-explored archival resources to explore four key research areas: stars and stardom; creative collaborations in filmmaking; developments in genre and film style; and how the cinema of the period both responded and contributed to social and cultural transformation in the 1960s.