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The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960
 
 
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The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 [Paperback]

David Bordwell , Janet Staiger , Kristin Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 658 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge; New edition edition (28 July 1988)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0415003830
  • ISBN-13: 978-0415003834
  • Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 18.8 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 326,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Review

"A tour de force... destined to become itself a classic in film studies and a magnificent introduction to the American cinema for a much wider audience... 'The Classical Hollywood Cinema' will surely arouse discussion and debate--how could it not, since no one who studies film at whatever level can henceforth ignore it." American Film "This brilliant achievement will not soon be surpassed. It will be the foundation for all future research in the field..." Choice --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

'A dense, challenging and important book.' Philip French Observer

'At the very least, this blockbuster is probably the best single volume history of Hollywood we're likely to get for a very long time.' Paul Kerr City Limits

'Persuasively argued, the book is also packed with facts, figures and photographs.' Nigel Andrews Financial Times

Acclaimed for their breakthrough approach, Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson analyze the basic conditions of American film-making as a historical institution and consider to what extent Hollywood film production constitutes a systematic enterprise, in both its style and its business operations.

Despite differences of director, genre or studio, most Hollywood films operate within a set of shared assumptions about how a film should look and sound. Such assumptions are neither natural nor inevitable; but because classical-style films have been the type most widely seen, they have come to be accepted as the 'norm' of film-making and viewing.

The authors show how these classical conventions were formulated and standardized, and how they responded to the arrival of sound, colour, widescreen ratios and stereophonic sound. They argue that each new technological development has served a function within an existing narrational system.

The authors also examine how the Hollywood cinema standardized the film-making process itself. They describe how, over the course of its history, Hollywood developed distinct modes of production in a constant search for maximum efficiency, predictability and novelty.

Set apart by its combination of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this book is the standard work on the classical Hollywood cinema style of film-making from the silent era to the 1960s. Now available in paperback, it is a 'must' for film students, lecturers and all those seriously interested in the development of the film industry.


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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Truly indispensible 24 Feb 2003
Format:Paperback
This text has become canonical in most places where film is studied academically. It is thorough, lucid, and insightful, and has become one of the key frameworks in which people understand and exchange ideas regarding how films are constructed to signify meaning. It consists of close readings of numerous films from the classical period, and is thus rigorous and empirical - that is to say, it uses and cites textual evidence for its claims, rather than using the abstract theories or conjectures that many of us find so infuriating elsewhere.
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Amazon.com:  2 reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
a very interesting study of classical hollywood 8 April 2000
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I love old movies. They have some kind of magic that sadly I can't find in movies today. What this book does is to study the classical years- The classical narrative and how the system, style and people made together these classical movies. The starting point of this book is that almost all of the movies from 1917 to 1960 have the same elements, the same style- the style that today we all referring to when we think of hollywood- the way the story goes, the technical making (filming, editing) that tries to stay unseen and more. The authors choose 100 films from these years,almost all of them are not famous ones or films that made special impact, but films that were made out of the system. Out of these films they show the reader how the hollywood style make us blind to the technical elements and to the similarity of them- because although the norms changed all the time by films that broke the old norms- they all have similar basis. This book is very interesting and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn more about classical hollywood from the films themselves. The only complaint I have (and it's refering to the edition I read, which is from 1985)) is that the pages are divided to columns and it makes the reading a little uneasy, but still worth the reading.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A classic 17 Dec 2007
By Nikica Gilic - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Probably the only book of this sort; ambitious as it is informative, well written and wide in the scope of research; a true classic in the field of cinema history...

Obligatory reading for all who want to understand, study or write about American cinema; BOTH classical and contemporary, the book is also useful to other students of cinema...
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