Film History

As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we learn how the American theater serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazz brings the American musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.

The first comprehensive history of Hollywood's high-flying career women during the studio era, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. Based on a decade of archival research, author J. E. Smyth uncovers a formidable generation working within the American film industry and brings their voices back into the history of Hollywood.

George Miller made his first film, Mad Max, in 1976 after hiring unknown Mel Gibson and editing it in his kitchen. It would become the most profitable film ever made. Miller and Max is the story of two heroes. One, a globally recognised dystopian warrior. The second, the artist who created him. Written with the cooperation of a role call of cast, crew, family and associates, author Luke Buckmaster gets behind the scenes of both the set and the man: revealing the Max in Miller.

When Anna Broinowski learned that fracking had invaded downtown Sydney, she had a brilliant idea: she would seek guidance for a kryptonite-powerful, anti-fracking movie from the world's greatest propaganda factory - apart from Hollywood. After two years of trying, she was allowed to make her case in Pyongyang and was granted full permission to film. She worked closely with the leading lights of North Korean cinema, even playing an American in a military thriller.

Rollyson fully explores Brennan's work with Hollywood's greatest directors, such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Fritz Lang. As a father and grandfather, Brennan instilled generations of his family with an outlook on the American Dream that remains a sustaining feature of their lives today. His conservative politics, which grew out of his New England upbringing and his devout Catholicism, receive meticulous attention and a balanced assessment in A Real American Character.

The incomparable Simone Signoret (1921 - 1985), one of the grand actresses of the twentieth century and one of France's most notable stars, considered herself the "oldest discovery" in Hollywood. After years of blacklisting during the McCarthy era, she was 38 years old when she entered Hollywood through the back door in the 1959 British blockbuster Room at the Top. Her portrayal of the endearing Alice Aisgill earned her the Academy Award in 1960, the first French actor to win a coveted Oscar.

The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Updated and timed for the 60th anniversary (Thanksgiving Day, 1942) of this movie, this critically acclaimed book draws upon years of research, including access to Ingrid Bergman's personal acting diaries and the vast Warner Brothers archives, as well as interviews with many of those close to the film, including the late Paul Henreid, Lauren Bacall, and scriptwriters Howard Koch and Julius Epstein.

Former physicist Andrew Maynard threads together his love of science-fiction movies with his expertise on emerging technologies to engage, entertain, and make you think about the relationship between technology and society. Through the imagination and creativity of science-fiction movies, Maynard introduces listeners to the profound capabilities presented by new and emerging technologies, and the complex personal and societal challenges they present.

A palavra pressa é o particípio passado, em latim, do verbo premere (apertar). Assim, pode-se dizer que A História do Cinema para Quem Tem Pressa se propõe a contar uma das maiores sagas do século 20 (e deste início do 21) para quem precisa apertar o passo ou está apertado de tempo. E quem não está? Sabadin traça um panorama do cinema – linguagem que há mais de um século revoluciona nossa maneira de ver a vida –, desde a época em que seus inventores nem sabiam direito o que fazer com ele, até os dias de hoje, quando movimenta bilhões de dólares pelos cinco continentes.

Between 1934 and 1968, no Hollywood studio could make a movie without the permission of, and a seal of approval from, the Production Code Administration. Formed in 1930 but not enforced until 1934, the Production Code was Hollywood’s official censorship system. Screenplays, books, plays, costumes, and even story ideas and song lyrics had to be cleared by the Code before they could be filmed, and Code staffers watched at every stage of the production process to ensure compliance.

When Brian DePalma's operatically violent and profane Scarface debuted in 1983, the film drew almost as much fire as the relentless gunfire in the film itself. The movie was a remake of 1932's Scarface—revamped for a new era of drugs, sex, and graphic violence. Attacked as both a celebration of cocaine-fueled excess and a condemnation of it, the film's reputation only grew as the years went by. But the real story of its success started nearly a century ago—when Hollywood first fell in love with the American gangster....

Ride Lonesome, the fifth film in the "Ranown cycle," is both the best and most representative of the whole series, which has been called "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking." Director Bud Boetticher captures the alienation and loneliness of an America faced with the Cold War and the daily threat of nuclear annihilation. Shot in seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism.

This warm, loving, and often hilarious personal history of My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Gigi describes the cast of a great era in American musical theater: Moss Heart, Fritz Loewe, Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Cecil Beaton, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Caron...

Ernest Hemingway called Huckleberry Finn “the best book we’ve ever had. There was nothing before. There’s been nothing as good since.” Critical opinion of this book hasn’t dimmed since Hemingway uttered these words; as author Russell Banks says in these pages, Twain “makes possible...

A Companion to Martin Scorsese is a comprehensive collection of original essays assessing the career of one of America's most prominent contemporary filmmakers....

For No Reason at All: The Changing Narrative of the First World War in American Film discusses a variety of Great War-themed films made from 1915 to the present, tracing the changing approaches to the conflict over time.

El impacto visual de Titanic no solo radica en su escala monumental, sino en la maestría cinematográfica con la que James Cameron dio vida a esta historia épica. Este libro explora en profundidad cada aspecto técnico y artístico que convirtió a Titanic en una de las películas más influyentes de la historia del cine.

For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history. Now that story is finally being told.

Take a magic-carpet ride through Disney's wonderful world of films and entertainment experiences and discover the wisdom within its most popular and enduring stories.