American
Cinema of the 1930s
Price: $24.95
Subtitle: Themes and Variations
Editor: Ina Rae Hark
Subject: Film / American Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-8135-4082-5
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8135-4081-8
Pages: 288 pages. 33 b&w
illustrations
Publication Date: September 2007
Series:
The
Screen Decades
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Description:
Probably no decade saw as many changes in the Hollywood film
industry and its product as the 1930s did. At the beginning of the
decade, the industry was still struggling with the transition to
talking pictures. Gangster films and naughty comedies starring Mae West
were popular in urban areas, but aroused threats of censorship in the
heartland. Whether the film business could survive the economic effects
of the Crash was up in the air. By 1939, popularly called "Hollywood's
Greatest Year," films like Gone With the Wind and The
Wizard of Oz used both color and sound to spectacular effect, and
remain American icons today. The "mature oligopoly" that was the studio
system had not only weathered the Depression and become part of
mainstream culture through the establishment and enforcement of the
Production Code, it was a well-oiled, vertically integrated industrial
powerhouse.
The ten original essays in American Cinema of the 1930s
focus on sixty diverse films of the decade, including Dracula, The
Public Enemy, Trouble in Paradise, 42nd Street, King Kong, Imitation of
Life, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Swing Time, Angels with Dirty
Faces, Nothing Sacred, Jezebel, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and
Stagecoach .
A volume in the Screen Decades: American Culture/American
Cinema series, edited by Lester D. Friedman and Murray Pomerance
About the Author:
Ina Rae Hark is a professor of English and film
studies at the University of South Carolina.
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