American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960

This authoritative collection of introductory and specialized readings takes readers through the rich, varied, and creative history of early American film, from the inception of cinema in the late–1890s, through the decline of the studio system in the 1960s. Accessibly structured by historical period to provide cultural, social, political, and technological context, the book includes coverage of a fascinating range of subjects, from silent film and iconic figures such as Charlie Chaplin, the coming of sound, the rise of film genres and studio moguls, and contributions of women and African–Americans to early film history, along with  the rise of the early avant–garde, the Production Code, and the Cold War era of the Hollywood Blacklist.

Written by a team of respected authors, The History of American Film: Origins to 1960 balances its coverage of the vital trends and developments in mainstream film with topics often relegated to the margins of standard film histories. Key films covered include early D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, and Buster Keaton films, films of Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille, Don Juan and The Jazz Singer, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, films of the early avant–garde, Scarface, Red Dust, Glorifying the American Girl, Meet Me in St. Louis, Citizen Kane, Bambi, Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Rebel Without a Cause, Force of Evil, selected American underground films, among many others. It is designed with the student in mind: each section opens with an historical overview, and provides close, careful readings of individual films clustered around specific topics. Additional online resources such as sample syllabi, for general and specialized courses, including suggested readings and filmographies, also available at www.wiley.com/go/lucia.

Cynthia Lucia is Professor of English and Director of Film and Media Studies at Rider University. She is author of Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial in Film (2005) and writes for Cineaste film magazine, where she has served on the editorial board for more than two decades. Her most recent research includes essays that appear in A Companion to Woody Allen (Wiley, 2013), Modern British Drama on Screen (2014), and Law, Culture and Visual Studies (2014).

Roy Grundmann is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Boston University. He is the author of Andy Warhol’s ‘Blow Job’ (2003) and the editor of A Companion to Michael Haneke (Wiley 2010). He is Contributing Editor of Cineaste and has published essays in a range of prestigious anthologies and journals, including GLQ, Cineaste, Continuum, The Velvet Light Trap, and Millennium Film Journal. He has curated retrospectives on Michael Haneke, Andy Warhol, and Matthias Müller.

Art Simon is Professor of Film Studies at Montclair State University. He is the author of Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film (2 nd edition, 2013). He has curated two film exhibitions for the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York City and his work has been published in the edited collection “Un–American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (2007) and in the journal American Jewish History.

Together they are the editors of the four volume reference work The Wiley–Blackwell History of American Film (2012), The History of American Film: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960 and The History of American Film: Selected Readings, 1960 to the present (both 2015), all published by Wiley–Blackwell.