Post-Classical Hollywood

Film Industry, Style and Ideology since 1945

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by Barry Langford

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > United States

Keywords

Hollywood, United States, genre, ideology

Publishing date

2010

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 320 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-7486-3857-4

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Book Presentation:
At the end of World War II, Hollywood basked in unprecedented prosperity. Since then, numerous challenges and crises have changed the American film industry in ways beyond imagination in 1945. Nonetheless, at the start of a new century Hollywood's worldwide dominance is intact - indeed, in today's global economy the products of the American entertainment industry (of which movies are now only one part) are more ubiquitous than ever.

How does today's 'Hollywood' - absorbed into transnational media conglomerates like NewsCorp., Sony, and Viacom - differ from the legendary studios of Hollywood's Golden Age? What are the dominant frameworks and conventions, the historical contexts and the governing attitudes through which films are made, marketed and consumed today? How have these changed across the last seven decades? And how have these evolving contexts helped shape the form, the style and the content of Hollywood movies, from Singin' in the Rain to Pirates of the Caribbean?

Barry Langford explains and interrogates the concept of 'post-classical' Hollywood cinema - its coherence, its historical justification and how it can help or hinder our understanding of Hollywood from the forties to the present. Integrating film history, discussion of movies' social and political dimensions, and analysis of Hollywood's distinctive methods of storytelling, Post-Classical Hollywood charts key critical debates alongside the histories they interpret, while offering its own account of the 'post-classical'. Wide-ranging yet concise, challenging and insightful, Post-Classical Hollywood offers a new perspective on the most enduringly fascinating artform of our age.

About the Author:
Barry Langford is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the Royal Holloway, University of London.

Press Reviews:
The book's strengths are real strengths: a good deal of original research, smart writing, and interpretative originality that increases as the book progresses. Highly recommended– S. C. Dillon, Bates College, Choice

Langford's study is both comprehensive and detailed, always keeping the different levels of analysis distinct, while allowing them to inform each other and broaden our understanding of the permutations of Hollywood after 1945.– Steen Christiansen, Aalborg University, Denmark, SCOPE: An Online Journal of Film Studies

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press