American Film Studies

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  Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film

  This book examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. Through discussion of thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, the book examines the sacrificial role of what it terms the “Celluloid Maiden”—a young Native woman who allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. The book intertwines theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground the study in socio-historical context all in an attempt to define what it means to be an American. As the book charts the consistent depiction of the ...Read More

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  We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II

  During the highly charged years of World War II, movies perhaps best communicated to Americans who they were and why they were fighting. These films were more than just an explanation of historical events: they asked audiences to consider the Nazi threat, they put a face on both the enemies and allies, and they explored changing wartime gender roles. This book shows how film after film repeated the narratives, character types, and rhetoric that made the war and each American's role in it comprehensible. To write this book the authors watched more than six-hundred films made between 1937 and 1946—including ...Read More

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  Reconstructing American Historical Cinema: From Cimarron to Citizen Kane

  This book departs from the traditional understanding of the relationship between film and history. By looking at production records, scripts, and contemporary reviews, the book argues that certain classical Hollywood filmmakers were actively engaged in a self-conscious and often critical filmic writing of national history. This volume is a reassessment of American historiography and cinematic historians from the advent of sound to the beginning of wartime film production in 1942. Focusing on key films such as Cimarron (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932), Ramona (1936), A Star Is Born (1937), Jezebel (1938), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Gone with the ...Read More

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  Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee

  New York has appeared in more movies than Michael Caine, and the resulting overfamiliarity to moviegoers poses a problem for critics and filmmakers alike. Audiences often mistake the New York image of skyscrapers and bright lights for the real thing, when in fact the City is a network of clearly defined villages, each with a unique personality. Standard film depictions of New Yorkers as a rush-hour mass of undifferentiated humanity obscure the connections formed between people and places in the City’s diverse neighborhoods.

  Street Smart examines the cultural influences of New York’s neighborhoods on the work of four quintessentially New ...Read More

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  Sidney Lumet: Film and Literary Vision

  Since 1957, Sidney Lumet, the most prolific American director of his generation, has deepened audiences’ awareness of social, ethical, and feminist issues through such distinguished films as 12 Angry Men, The Verdict, Running on Empty, and Critical Care. Especially praised for his literary adaptations—including Long Day’s Journey into Night and Murder on the Orient Express—Lumet has also directed such trenchant urban films as Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Network.

  In this new edition Frank Cunningham expands his analysis of Lumet’s earlier films and examines his most recent work, from A Stranger Among Us (1992) to Gloria (1999). Also new to ...Read More

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  Studio Affairs: My Life as a Film Director

  As a young Jewish boy growing up in Vienna, Georgia, Abe Orovitz could never have predicted the twists and turns his life would take. Many years later, as retired film director with more than thirty movies to his credit, Vincent Sherman is no less surprised when he looks back on that life.

  In Studio Affairs he retraces his life with candor and enthusiasm. Sherman discusses the details of his three-year relationship with Joan Crawford, his inadvertent connection with the death of Bette Davis’s second husband, and his poignant romantic involvement with Rita Hayworth. Providing counterpoint to these liaisons is the ...Read More

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  The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film

  The American World War II film depicted a united America, a mythic America in which the average guy, the girl next door, the 4-F patriot, and the grieving mother were suddenly transformed into heroes and heroines, warriors and goddesses. The Star-Spangled Screen examines the historical accuracy—or lack thereof—of films about the Third Reich, the Resistance, and major military campaigns. Concerned primarily with the films of the war years, it also includes discussions of such postwar movies as Battleground (1949), Attack! (1956), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Patton (1970). This revised edition includes a new afterword that covers ...Read More