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    American Cinema of the 1930s
    Themes and Variations

    Ina Rae Hark (Edited by)

    9780813540825

    Paperback / softback, published 21 June 2007

    296 pages, 33
    23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.454 kg

    “There is nothing like this series. Screen Decades firmly situates American cinema in the realms of material culture, popular culture, cultural narrative, reception analysis, and industrial history.”

    (American Quarterly)

    “There is nothing like this series. Screen Decades firmly situates American cinema in the realms of material culture, popular culture, cultural narrative, reception analysis, and industrial history.”

    (American Quarterly)

    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 toWashington, and Stagecoach .

    1930 : Movies and social difference / Aaron Baker
    1931 : Movies and the voice / Cynthia Erb
    1932 : Movies and transgression / David Lugowski
    1933 : Movies and the New Deal in entertainment / Martin Rubin
    1934 : Movies and the marginalized / Charlene Regester
    1935 : Movies and the resistance to tyranny / Ina Rae Hark
    1936 : Movies and the possibility of transcendence / Susan Ohmer
    1937 : Movies and new constructions of the American star / Allen Larson
    1938 : Movies and whistling in the dark / Sam B. Girgus
    1939 : Movies and American culture in the annus mirabilis / Charles Maland
    Select Academy Awards, 1930-1939
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