The American Jewish Story through Cinema Eric A. Goldman, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 2013. $55 hardcover, $25 paperback, 264 pages.In his new book, The American Jewish Story through Cinema, Eric A. Goldman attempts to explore the American Jewish story by looking at film. Note the word story: not history, not experience, but story. This is of central importance for the work since it is this point that makes an assessment of it so difficult. The scholarship on American Jews and film is and has been rather strong at least since the 1980s. At first glance, Goldman's book seems to be another addition to this scholarship of which Patricia Erens' The Jew in American Cinema (Indiana, 1985) is perhaps the most noteworthy. Goldman has, however, carved out a niche for himself, looking at the collective Jewish story not on film but through film, essentially making movies the building blocks for his narrative. It is an intriguing and engaging narrative. In some ways Goldman's book reads like a lecture - in a good sense, as he is able to write engagingly and has a talent for weaving a narrative.The main problem with Goldman's book is his explicit goal to use "the medium of cinema to provide an understanding of the changing situation of the American Jew over the last century" (ix). Goldman makes it clear that he is not looking to tell the story of how Jews are presented on the silver screen over the 20th century, nor is he seemingly interested in writing the history of the Jewish community in America in the 20th century while incorporating cinema in his analysis. Rather, he goes to great lengths to separate his work from these alternatives by arguing that he is telling the story of the collective Jewish experience in 20th century America with the help of film representations, in a way making the movies themselves nothing more than illustrations of the themes and attitudes he is trying to portray. As he puts it, cinema is "a way of telling the story, a Haggadah of what has transpired for Jews in America" (xii). As Goldman earlier defines Haggadah as the "traditional 'telling' of the story" (ix) one is left with the sense that he is not writing an academic history but rather a story. In fact, the reason the book reads like a lecture is that the analysis is informal: Goldman seems more interested in presenting a point with movie clips than in actually exploring a scholarly question in an open and methodologically sound way. Nevertheless, it is clear that Goldman possesses a deep understanding of the subject matter and the book is inarguably well written.Goldman chooses nine films for his analysis, each either individually or in pairs representing a certain decade, or period. While his selections are intriguing, he offers little insight into his criteria of selection, stating only that "I have chosen select films that I consider representative of specific historical periods" (xii). As a result, the nine films are a motley crew, including some of the most
{"title":"The American Jewish Story through Cinema","authors":"Oscar Winberg","doi":"10.7560/744301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/744301","url":null,"abstract":"The American Jewish Story through Cinema Eric A. Goldman, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 2013. $55 hardcover, $25 paperback, 264 pages.In his new book, The American Jewish Story through Cinema, Eric A. Goldman attempts to explore the American Jewish story by looking at film. Note the word story: not history, not experience, but story. This is of central importance for the work since it is this point that makes an assessment of it so difficult. The scholarship on American Jews and film is and has been rather strong at least since the 1980s. At first glance, Goldman's book seems to be another addition to this scholarship of which Patricia Erens' The Jew in American Cinema (Indiana, 1985) is perhaps the most noteworthy. Goldman has, however, carved out a niche for himself, looking at the collective Jewish story not on film but through film, essentially making movies the building blocks for his narrative. It is an intriguing and engaging narrative. In some ways Goldman's book reads like a lecture - in a good sense, as he is able to write engagingly and has a talent for weaving a narrative.The main problem with Goldman's book is his explicit goal to use \"the medium of cinema to provide an understanding of the changing situation of the American Jew over the last century\" (ix). Goldman makes it clear that he is not looking to tell the story of how Jews are presented on the silver screen over the 20th century, nor is he seemingly interested in writing the history of the Jewish community in America in the 20th century while incorporating cinema in his analysis. Rather, he goes to great lengths to separate his work from these alternatives by arguing that he is telling the story of the collective Jewish experience in 20th century America with the help of film representations, in a way making the movies themselves nothing more than illustrations of the themes and attitudes he is trying to portray. As he puts it, cinema is \"a way of telling the story, a Haggadah of what has transpired for Jews in America\" (xii). As Goldman earlier defines Haggadah as the \"traditional 'telling' of the story\" (ix) one is left with the sense that he is not writing an academic history but rather a story. In fact, the reason the book reads like a lecture is that the analysis is informal: Goldman seems more interested in presenting a point with movie clips than in actually exploring a scholarly question in an open and methodologically sound way. Nevertheless, it is clear that Goldman possesses a deep understanding of the subject matter and the book is inarguably well written.Goldman chooses nine films for his analysis, each either individually or in pairs representing a certain decade, or period. While his selections are intriguing, he offers little insight into his criteria of selection, stating only that \"I have chosen select films that I consider representative of specific historical periods\" (xii). As a result, the nine films are a motley crew, including some of the most","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"119 1","pages":"65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77375153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Directory of World Cinema: Turkey","authors":"María Gil Poisa","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-2557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-2557","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"30 1","pages":"61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76572850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John Sbardellati J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood's Gold War Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012. 256 pp. Hard CoverIf once-secret FBI files are any gauge, Hollywood's propagation of Communist doctrine was more cunning and pervasive than imagined. Vigilant FBI agents and informants detected the taint of Communism everywhere-in such disparate pictures as Warner Brothers' Pride of the Marines (1945), Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Paramount's Roman Holiday (1953). But the FBI found few pictures more insidiously Marxist than Universal's Buck Privates Gome Home (1947). While the Abbott and Costello vehicle seemed a "rather inoculous [sic] film," its true intent, the surveillance report stated, was to raise the specter of "class consciousness." This sinister purpose, explained the report, was effected by crosscutting between a general's party and a buck private on KP duty. In such fashion did FBI surveillance merge into film theory and criticism.As John Sbardellati's J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies details, the Bureau unwittingly began nibbling at the edges of media theory in the silent era while monitoring movies for "radicalism." Although that first Red Scare faded, J. Edgar's Hoover's fears never abated. Rather, they so intensified during World War II that Hoover launched a sweeping secret investigation of Hollywood that lasted from 1942 to 1958. J. Edgar Hoover documents the severity and extent of the FBI's unilateral covert operation. Had people in the 1950s known what the Bureau's files contained, asserts one historian, McCarthyism would most likely have been called Hooverism. Making excellent use of FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Sbardellati, a historian at the University of Waterloo (Ontario), has fashioned a brisk, multi-faceted narrative of historical and cultural significance.On one level, J. Edgar Hoover is a paean to cinema. Like their Soviet counterparts, American police agencies and politicians were quick to recognize film's power, which only intensified as the industry developed. The secret October 1943 report to Hoover (from a special agent in Los Angles) called the motion picture industry the greatest '"influence upon the minds and culture, not only of the people of the United States, but of the entire world.'" Thus, concludes Sbardellati, the FBI grasped the truth of Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined" communities "years before" those scholars who would argue that national cinemas-and their surrounding discourses-are vital to the fabrication of national identities.The October 1943 report states that Moscow had ini 935 directed the Communist Party USA to infiltrate Hollywood labor unions and "'the so-called cultural and creative fields' in order to 'determine the type of propaganda to be injected into the motion pictures.'" The report further delineates an eight-pronged attack. However, says the author, the Bureau failed to d
《埃德加·胡佛去看电影:联邦调查局和好莱坞黄金战争的起源》伊萨卡和伦敦:康奈尔大学出版社，2012年。如果以曾经的FBI机密文件为标准，那么好莱坞对共产主义教义的宣传比想象中更加狡猾和普遍。警觉的联邦调查局特工和线人发现共产主义的污点无处不在——在华纳兄弟的《海军陆战队的骄傲》(1945)、迪斯尼的《爱丽丝梦游仙境》(1951)和派拉蒙的《罗马假日》(1953)等迥异的影片中。但联邦调查局发现，没有几部电影比环球公司的《巴克私有制国美》(1947)更阴险地带有马克思主义色彩。虽然雅培和科斯特洛的汽车看起来是一部“相当无知的电影”，但监控报告指出，它的真正意图是唤起“阶级意识”的幽灵。报告解释说，这一险恶的目的是由一名将军的政党和一名执行KP任务的二等兵之间的横切造成的。就这样，联邦调查局的监视活动融入了电影理论和批评之中。正如John Sbardellati的《J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies》所详细描述的那样，该局在监视电影中的“激进主义”时，不知不觉地开始啃咬无声时代媒体理论的边缘。虽然第一次红色恐慌消退了，但埃德加的胡佛的恐惧从未减弱。相反，这种情况在第二次世界大战期间加剧，以至于胡佛从1942年到1958年对好莱坞进行了全面的秘密调查。j·埃德加·胡佛记录了联邦调查局单方面秘密行动的严重性和范围。一位历史学家断言，如果20世纪50年代的人知道fbi的文件中包含了什么，麦卡锡主义很可能会被称为胡佛主义。滑铁卢大学(安大略省)的历史学家Sbardellati通过《信息自由法》(Freedom of Information Act)出色地利用了联邦调查局(FBI)的文件，对历史和文化意义进行了生动、多方面的叙述。在某种程度上，j·埃德加·胡佛是电影的赞歌。与苏联同行一样，美国的警察机构和政界人士很快就认识到了电影的力量，随着电影行业的发展，这种力量只会越来越强。1943年10月，一份提交给胡佛的秘密报告(来自洛杉矶的一名特工)称，电影工业不仅对美国人民，而且对全世界人民的思想和文化产生了最大的“影响”。因此，Sbardellati总结道，联邦调查局在“早于”那些认为国家电影及其周边话语对国家身份建构至关重要的学者”的几年前，就掌握了本尼迪克特·安德森(Benedict Anderson)“想象”社区概念的真相。1943年10月的报告指出，莫斯科在1995年指示美国共产党渗透到好莱坞工会和“所谓的文化和创意领域”，以便“确定要注入电影的宣传类型”。报告进一步描述了一种八管齐下的攻击。然而，作者说，该局未能制定一种适当的方法来支持下述前提，即共产主义宣传成功地注入了二战期间制作的电影，以及它们假定的红色倾向构成了国家威胁。总的来说，FBI预测了受众接受的“皮下注射针”理论——也就是说，受众是被动的、不加批判的巨石，信息可能会被注入其中，产生持久的影响。抛开有效性不谈，把这个比喻延伸到“感染”这个概念上，可以很好地反映胡佛的心态。他的联邦调查局将共产主义视为一种高度易变的病毒，即使是最轻微的接触也会传播。例如，《每日工人》(Daily Worker)上的一篇好评足以将查理·卓别林(Charlie Chaplin)的《赫梅利特》(Hmelight, 1952)列入FBI的“嫌疑人”名单。(看起来，FBI的分析师研究影评的热情，和焦虑的制片人是一样的。)根据联邦调查局的文件，《每日工人》评论称《赫米莱特》是卓别林最好的电影之一，包含了他“对我们生活的世界的真实思考，以及他对人类之间更多友谊的呼吁”。…
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Pub Date : 2011-01-01DOI: 10.2979/FILMHISTORY.23.2.242
Johnson
{"title":"Charlene Regester, African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900––1960","authors":"Johnson","doi":"10.2979/FILMHISTORY.23.2.242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/FILMHISTORY.23.2.242","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"156 1","pages":"242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76095634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn. Reality TV: Realism and Revelation. Wallflower Press, 2005. 183 pages; $22.50. Therapeutic Culture In Reality TV: Realism and Revelation, Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn discuss the cultural significance of reality TV programming in Britain. Using several case studies, the authors demonstrate how this genre (which includes talk and game shows, law and order programming, 24/7 formats, and dramatic reconstruction) has changed viewers' expectations, the definition of celebrity, and, most importantly, the representation of the "truth." Each chapter reads like a separate essay, but uniting such topics as the documentaries of Errol Morris, re-enactments like The Trench, and the televised death-defying stunts of illusionist David Blaine is the relationship between subjectivity and performance. Further, the emphasis on confession and exhibitionism indicates how pervasive "therapeutic discourse" and "the revelation of trauma" have become in popular culture (7). The initial chapters describe various examples of the observational documentary in order to trace how reality TV programs, with their focus on "ordinary" (i.e. working and middle class citizens) have borrowed from this format. What has been lost, for better or worse, however, is the political, left-leaning agenda of the documentary. State-funded films of the '30s and '40s, for instance, examined the lives of the working class and advocated change, while docudramas (films that used fictional characters to treat real social issues), like Cathy Come Home by director Ken Loach, gave viewers access to tenements and caravans, satisfying voyeuristic curiosity but also exposing the failure of the welfare state to abolish the class barrier in Britain. Yet as film and TV began to focus more and more on narratives of personal trauma, the goal of political advocacy took a back seat to the focus on domestic drama and "narrative-fuelled entertainment" (84). Reality TV programming is both a product of and fuelled by what Biressi and Nunn call a "therapeutic culture," with its dominance of subjective experience and the eroding boundary between public and private. One of the most disturbing examples of the media's and viewing public's fascination with the revelation of personal trauma was the British Everyman documentary series on Court TV, Our Father the Serial Killer. Biressi and Nunn make excellent use of this strange program in which a brother and sister, convinced that their now elderly and harmless-looking father committed a series of grisly murders, retrace the scenes of his alleged crimes. Though the program never proves or disproves the father's guilt, it becomes clear that the siblings were victims of abuse at his hands. That such a trauma-based narrative would attract a large viewing audience and serve as "entertainment" is a topic worthy of its own book. Perhaps the weakest part of Reality TV: Realism and Revelation is its cursory attention to the larger historical context
Anita Biressi和Heather Nunn。真人秀电视:现实主义和启示。壁花出版社，2005年。183页;22.50美元。《真人秀节目中的治疗文化:现实主义与启示》一书中，Anita Biressi和Heather Nunn讨论了英国真人秀节目的文化意义。通过几个案例研究，作者展示了这种类型(包括谈话和游戏节目，法律和秩序节目，24/7格式和戏剧性重建)如何改变了观众的期望，名人的定义，最重要的是，“真相”的表现。每一章读起来都像是一篇单独的文章，但将埃罗尔·莫里斯的纪录片、《战壕》的再现、以及魔术师大卫·布莱恩在电视上播放的挑战死亡的特技等主题结合起来，是主观性与表演之间的关系。此外，对忏悔和暴露癖的强调表明，在流行文化中，“治疗话语”和“创伤的揭露”是多么普遍(7)。文章的开头几章描述了观察性纪录片的各种例子，以追踪关注“普通人”(即工人阶级和中产阶级公民)的真人秀节目是如何借鉴这种形式的。然而，不管是好是坏，这部纪录片所失去的是政治的、左倾的议程。例如，30年代和40年代的国家资助电影审视了工人阶级的生活，倡导变革，而纪实电影(用虚构人物来处理真实社会问题的电影)，如肯·洛奇(Ken Loach)导演的《凯茜回家》(Cathy Come Home)，让观众得以进入公寓和大篷车，满足了偷窥癖的好奇心，但也暴露了福利国家在消除英国阶级障碍方面的失败。然而，随着电影和电视开始越来越关注个人创伤的叙事，政治宣传的目标让位于对国内戏剧和“叙事驱动的娱乐”的关注(84)。电视真人秀节目既是Biressi和Nunn所说的“治疗文化”的产物，也是其推波助威的动力，这种文化以主观体验为主导，公共和私人之间的界限正在逐渐消失。媒体和观众对揭露个人创伤着迷的最令人不安的例子之一是法庭电视台的英国普通人纪录片系列，我们的父亲是连环杀手。Biressi和Nunn很好地利用了这个奇怪的节目，在这个节目中，一对兄妹确信他们年迈的、看起来无害的父亲犯下了一系列可怕的谋杀案，他们重新追溯了他所谓的犯罪现场。虽然这个节目从来没有证明或反驳过父亲的罪行，但很明显，这对兄弟姐妹是他虐待的受害者。这种以创伤为基础的叙事会吸引大量观众，并成为一种“娱乐”，这是一个值得专门写一本书的话题。也许真人秀节目最薄弱的部分:现实主义和启示是它对真人秀节目成长的更大的历史背景的草率关注。作者提到了技术的变化导致了观众驱动的节目，以及经济和社会秩序的崩溃，这使得工人阶级的参与者在《老大哥》这样的节目中获得了宣传和即时财富。．．．
{"title":"Reality TV: Realism and Revelation","authors":"J. Taddeo","doi":"10.5860/choice.43-3461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.43-3461","url":null,"abstract":"Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn. Reality TV: Realism and Revelation. Wallflower Press, 2005. 183 pages; $22.50. Therapeutic Culture In Reality TV: Realism and Revelation, Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn discuss the cultural significance of reality TV programming in Britain. Using several case studies, the authors demonstrate how this genre (which includes talk and game shows, law and order programming, 24/7 formats, and dramatic reconstruction) has changed viewers' expectations, the definition of celebrity, and, most importantly, the representation of the \"truth.\" Each chapter reads like a separate essay, but uniting such topics as the documentaries of Errol Morris, re-enactments like The Trench, and the televised death-defying stunts of illusionist David Blaine is the relationship between subjectivity and performance. Further, the emphasis on confession and exhibitionism indicates how pervasive \"therapeutic discourse\" and \"the revelation of trauma\" have become in popular culture (7). The initial chapters describe various examples of the observational documentary in order to trace how reality TV programs, with their focus on \"ordinary\" (i.e. working and middle class citizens) have borrowed from this format. What has been lost, for better or worse, however, is the political, left-leaning agenda of the documentary. State-funded films of the '30s and '40s, for instance, examined the lives of the working class and advocated change, while docudramas (films that used fictional characters to treat real social issues), like Cathy Come Home by director Ken Loach, gave viewers access to tenements and caravans, satisfying voyeuristic curiosity but also exposing the failure of the welfare state to abolish the class barrier in Britain. Yet as film and TV began to focus more and more on narratives of personal trauma, the goal of political advocacy took a back seat to the focus on domestic drama and \"narrative-fuelled entertainment\" (84). Reality TV programming is both a product of and fuelled by what Biressi and Nunn call a \"therapeutic culture,\" with its dominance of subjective experience and the eroding boundary between public and private. One of the most disturbing examples of the media's and viewing public's fascination with the revelation of personal trauma was the British Everyman documentary series on Court TV, Our Father the Serial Killer. Biressi and Nunn make excellent use of this strange program in which a brother and sister, convinced that their now elderly and harmless-looking father committed a series of grisly murders, retrace the scenes of his alleged crimes. Though the program never proves or disproves the father's guilt, it becomes clear that the siblings were victims of abuse at his hands. That such a trauma-based narrative would attract a large viewing audience and serve as \"entertainment\" is a topic worthy of its own book. Perhaps the weakest part of Reality TV: Realism and Revelation is its cursory attention to the larger historical context","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"71 1","pages":"61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76843398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Robert Eberwein, editor. The War Film. Rutgers University Press, 2004. 236 pages; $22.95. Fundamental Elements Why we fight, or, more precisely, how we are and have been projected as a warring nation on film, is the subject of this edited book on American war films. Only a few classic foreign-made works are mentioned in passing. What should also be noted is that this book is largely concerned with the fictional combat or pseudo combat film as opposed to war dramas and/or various generic hybrids, such as training and POW films. In an otherwise thoughtful and informative introduction, this crucial distinction is never clearly engaged. Instead, the extended analytical introduction focuses on the most fundamental elements of the war film genre: documenting, re-enacting, and/or creating narratives concerning the experience of war-most particularly World War II and the Vietnam War-and then outlines the four predictable thematic sections of the book: Genre, Race, Gender, History. The War Film is thereafter comprised of a series of previously published articles and excerpts from books originally appearing in print between the mid 1980s and 2003. But, unfortunately, none have been revised in any way so that simple, but basic, factual errors remain. For instance: the wrong release date for John Ford's The Lost Patrol ( 1934) in the contribution from Jeanine Basinger 's seminal 1986 book, The World War II Combat Film. Though initially intended primarily for an academic audience, the selections are mostly jargon free and engage films that are easily accessible on DVD-a plus for using this book as a classroom text. A minus concerns its limiting dependence upon the list of usual suspects. An outstanding exception is Tania Modeleski's discussion of Dogfight (1991). After pointing out the misogyny in many Vietnam War-oriented films, she focuses on this comparatively obscure female-directed film starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. Presented as a 1966 flashback on personal events that took place in San Francisco in November 1963, Dogfight creates an interesting take on the collective psychology of America on the eve of its entrance into that prolonged conflict - through the eyes of an awkward young woman who has a less than traditional romantic encounter with a young soldier. Though definitely from a feminist perspective, neither the film nor Modeleski's close reading of it are didactic. The short contribution on All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) seems to be included for no other reason than that the film is part of the hoary canon of antiwar films. It is a weakly developed attempt to highlight the basic components of the antiwar subgenre that has not improved with age since its original publication in 1998. Moreover, it displays a superficial historical knowledge about that horrific 20th century global conflict and utterly fails to contextually establish why such antiwar statements were made, their impact, if any, and upon whom. There is an extended extra
Robert Eberwein，编辑。战争电影。罗格斯大学出版社，2004年。236页;22.95美元。我们为什么要打仗，或者更准确地说，我们是如何在电影中作为一个战争国家被投射出来的，这是这本关于美国战争电影的编辑书籍的主题。只有几部外国经典作品被顺带提及。值得注意的是，这本书主要关注的是虚构的战斗或伪战斗电影，而不是战争剧和/或各种通用的混合体，如训练和战俘电影。在另一篇深思熟虑且内容丰富的引言中，这一关键的区别从未被明确提及。相反，扩展的分析性介绍侧重于战争电影类型的最基本元素:记录、再现和/或创造关于战争经历的叙事——尤其是第二次世界大战和越南战争——然后概述了本书的四个可预见的主题部分:类型、种族、性别、历史。《战争电影》由一系列先前发表的文章和从20世纪80年代中期到2003年出版的书籍摘录而成。但是，不幸的是，没有一个被以任何方式修改，所以简单但基本的事实错误仍然存在。例如:约翰·福特的《迷失的巡逻队》(1934)的上映日期是错误的，这是珍妮·贝辛格1986年出版的影响深远的《第二次世界大战战斗电影》的贡献。虽然最初主要是为学术读者准备的，但这些选择大多是没有术语的，而且很容易在dvd上获得——这是将本书用作课堂教材的一个加分项。一个缺点是它对通常嫌疑人列表的有限依赖。一个突出的例外是Tania Modeleski关于Dogfight(1991)的讨论。在指出了许多越战题材电影中的厌女现象之后，她把注意力放在了这部由莱弗·菲尼克斯(River Phoenix)和莉莉·泰勒(Lili Taylor)主演的相对不知名的女性导演的电影上。作为1963年11月发生在旧金山的个人事件的1966年闪回，《斗狗》通过一个尴尬的年轻女人与一个年轻士兵不太寻常的浪漫邂逅的眼睛，在美国进入这场旷日持久的冲突前夕，创造了一个有趣的集体心理。虽然绝对是从女权主义的角度来看，但无论是电影还是莫德莱斯基对它的仔细阅读都不是说教。他对《西线无战事》(1930)的简短贡献似乎没有别的原因，只是因为这部电影是反战电影中陈旧经典的一部分。这是一个薄弱的发展尝试，以突出反战亚流派的基本组成部分，自1998年首次出版以来，并没有随着时间的推移而得到改善。此外，它对20世纪那场可怕的全球冲突只有肤浅的历史认识，完全没有从背景上确定为什么会发表这样的反战言论，它们的影响(如果有的话)，以及对谁产生了影响。这是贝辛格的书《第二次世界大战的战斗电影》中的一段摘录。通过对经典电影《巴丹》(Bataan, 1943)的仔细阅读，她成功地或多或少地编纂了基本的战斗电影公式，除了少数例外，它都以多民族、阶级和普遍的单位为中心。所有后来写过这个主题的人，包括我自己，都不能不受到她作品的影响。贝辛格在另一部二战美国电影《东京目的地》(1943)中，将作战部队比作一个在潜艇巡逻的狭小空间里的家庭，巩固并扩展了她的论点。这部电影由加里·格兰特(gary Grant)饰演船长。有趣的是，这是埃伯韦恩的《战争电影》中唯一一个涉及非地面战斗的部分。达纳·波兰的贡献主要体现在导演特伦斯·马利克对《细细的红线》(1998)的独特电影诠释上。波兰不仅关注导演的个人风格，还关注现实与观众对现实的感知之间的复杂交叉点——在战争经历方面，电影角色的超现实视角是否比斯皮尔伯格(Spielberg)的《拯救大兵瑞恩》(Saving Private Ryan, 1998)中被大肆吹捧的开场20分钟的战斗暴力形象表现更“真实”?…
{"title":"The War Film","authors":"Michael S. Shull","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-4549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-4549","url":null,"abstract":"Robert Eberwein, editor. The War Film. Rutgers University Press, 2004. 236 pages; $22.95. Fundamental Elements Why we fight, or, more precisely, how we are and have been projected as a warring nation on film, is the subject of this edited book on American war films. Only a few classic foreign-made works are mentioned in passing. What should also be noted is that this book is largely concerned with the fictional combat or pseudo combat film as opposed to war dramas and/or various generic hybrids, such as training and POW films. In an otherwise thoughtful and informative introduction, this crucial distinction is never clearly engaged. Instead, the extended analytical introduction focuses on the most fundamental elements of the war film genre: documenting, re-enacting, and/or creating narratives concerning the experience of war-most particularly World War II and the Vietnam War-and then outlines the four predictable thematic sections of the book: Genre, Race, Gender, History. The War Film is thereafter comprised of a series of previously published articles and excerpts from books originally appearing in print between the mid 1980s and 2003. But, unfortunately, none have been revised in any way so that simple, but basic, factual errors remain. For instance: the wrong release date for John Ford's The Lost Patrol ( 1934) in the contribution from Jeanine Basinger 's seminal 1986 book, The World War II Combat Film. Though initially intended primarily for an academic audience, the selections are mostly jargon free and engage films that are easily accessible on DVD-a plus for using this book as a classroom text. A minus concerns its limiting dependence upon the list of usual suspects. An outstanding exception is Tania Modeleski's discussion of Dogfight (1991). After pointing out the misogyny in many Vietnam War-oriented films, she focuses on this comparatively obscure female-directed film starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. Presented as a 1966 flashback on personal events that took place in San Francisco in November 1963, Dogfight creates an interesting take on the collective psychology of America on the eve of its entrance into that prolonged conflict - through the eyes of an awkward young woman who has a less than traditional romantic encounter with a young soldier. Though definitely from a feminist perspective, neither the film nor Modeleski's close reading of it are didactic. The short contribution on All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) seems to be included for no other reason than that the film is part of the hoary canon of antiwar films. It is a weakly developed attempt to highlight the basic components of the antiwar subgenre that has not improved with age since its original publication in 1998. Moreover, it displays a superficial historical knowledge about that horrific 20th century global conflict and utterly fails to contextually establish why such antiwar statements were made, their impact, if any, and upon whom. There is an extended extra","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"64 1","pages":"63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90005449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William B. Jones, Jr. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History with Illustrations. McFarland, 2002. 287 pages; $55.00. Postwar Period From approximately 1945 until 1955 another generation of American teenagers emerged onto the adolescent stage. Here, during these formative years, the youngsters played fast-moving neighborhood games such as Johnny-rides-a-pony, ringalevio, and spud, helped their mothers operate those ringer washing machines, while off to the side, eyed their fathers slap another patch on a tire's inner tube. In the schoolroom, they sang "The Arkansas Traveler," "Stout-Hearted Men," and "Tit Willow" while their teachers reminded them that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" or warned about the dangers of being "out of kilter." Back in the house, these kids screwed flashbulbs into cameras, threw coal into the furnace (later, they would remove the ashes), and, when feeling mischievous, listened to some neighbor "chew the fat" on those party line telephone connections. Sometimes, they watched an older sister (or an unmarried aunt) get "dolled up" for a Saturday night dance or envied an older brother who strolled into a diner and ordered a blue plate special. In their kitchens, these adolescents wolfed down bowls of Kellogg's Pep (Superman's official cereal), gulped glasses of Ovaltine (Captain Midnight's favorite drink), and watched their mothers toss a generous spoonful of Crisco into a frying pan, while in the background the radio adventures of Boston Blackie ("friend to those who had no friends"), The Fat Man ("Weight: 237 pounds; fortune: danger"), The Shadow ("Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"), We the People (Gabriel Heatter's reassuring "Ah, there's good news tonight"), and, of course, The Lone Ranger ("Who was that masked man?") emanated from the front room. At the neighborhood shows, the youngsters cheered their favorite cowboy heroes-Johnny Mack Brown, Lash LaRue, Red Barry, Hopalong Cassidy-galloping across the plains blasting those unsavory, mustachioed villains trying to steal some widow's ranch while over in the combat zone John Wayne, Dennis Morgan, and John Garfield repeatedly routed America's Axis foes. Since the postwar period was in its incipient stages, many of the youngsters remembered those blackout shades their parents installed, the postage-stamp-sized points necessary to buy rationed food, the backyard victory gardens, those war bonds sold almost everywhere, and the Memorial Day parades, where polite spectators quietly demurred when the Gold Star mothers-sitting collectively in their convertible automobiles-passed in review. For literary pursuits, every teenager stocked his own stash of comic books, those ten-cent purchases that provided untold enjoyment and faraway dreaming. Here in the fantasy world of Red Ryder, Little Lulu, Mandrake the Magician, Bucky Bug, L'il Abner, Smilin ' Jack, Terry and the Pirates, The Little King, and Dick Tracy, these adolescents reveled in the fun and fanc
{"title":"Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History with Illustrations","authors":"Robert J. Fyne","doi":"10.5860/choice.39-6242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.39-6242","url":null,"abstract":"William B. Jones, Jr. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History with Illustrations. McFarland, 2002. 287 pages; $55.00. Postwar Period From approximately 1945 until 1955 another generation of American teenagers emerged onto the adolescent stage. Here, during these formative years, the youngsters played fast-moving neighborhood games such as Johnny-rides-a-pony, ringalevio, and spud, helped their mothers operate those ringer washing machines, while off to the side, eyed their fathers slap another patch on a tire's inner tube. In the schoolroom, they sang \"The Arkansas Traveler,\" \"Stout-Hearted Men,\" and \"Tit Willow\" while their teachers reminded them that \"the proof of the pudding is in the eating\" or warned about the dangers of being \"out of kilter.\" Back in the house, these kids screwed flashbulbs into cameras, threw coal into the furnace (later, they would remove the ashes), and, when feeling mischievous, listened to some neighbor \"chew the fat\" on those party line telephone connections. Sometimes, they watched an older sister (or an unmarried aunt) get \"dolled up\" for a Saturday night dance or envied an older brother who strolled into a diner and ordered a blue plate special. In their kitchens, these adolescents wolfed down bowls of Kellogg's Pep (Superman's official cereal), gulped glasses of Ovaltine (Captain Midnight's favorite drink), and watched their mothers toss a generous spoonful of Crisco into a frying pan, while in the background the radio adventures of Boston Blackie (\"friend to those who had no friends\"), The Fat Man (\"Weight: 237 pounds; fortune: danger\"), The Shadow (\"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?\"), We the People (Gabriel Heatter's reassuring \"Ah, there's good news tonight\"), and, of course, The Lone Ranger (\"Who was that masked man?\") emanated from the front room. At the neighborhood shows, the youngsters cheered their favorite cowboy heroes-Johnny Mack Brown, Lash LaRue, Red Barry, Hopalong Cassidy-galloping across the plains blasting those unsavory, mustachioed villains trying to steal some widow's ranch while over in the combat zone John Wayne, Dennis Morgan, and John Garfield repeatedly routed America's Axis foes. Since the postwar period was in its incipient stages, many of the youngsters remembered those blackout shades their parents installed, the postage-stamp-sized points necessary to buy rationed food, the backyard victory gardens, those war bonds sold almost everywhere, and the Memorial Day parades, where polite spectators quietly demurred when the Gold Star mothers-sitting collectively in their convertible automobiles-passed in review. For literary pursuits, every teenager stocked his own stash of comic books, those ten-cent purchases that provided untold enjoyment and faraway dreaming. Here in the fantasy world of Red Ryder, Little Lulu, Mandrake the Magician, Bucky Bug, L'il Abner, Smilin ' Jack, Terry and the Pirates, The Little King, and Dick Tracy, these adolescents reveled in the fun and fanc","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"74 1","pages":"81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2004-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88570447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Don G. Smith. H.G. Wells on Film: The Utopian Nightmare. McFarland, 2002. 205 pages; $39.95. Widening Gulf Don G. Smith's H.G. Wells on Film is a reference work covering "every theatrically released film from 1909 to 1997 (both credited and unaccredited) based on the writings of H.G. Wells" (2). By casting his net so broadly, Smith reveals how frequently filmmakers have drawn on Wells' ideas over the last century (the book covers over forty films). At the same time, only a few of these motion picture adaptations actually addressed any of the stories' central concerns. This book is organized chronologically by the publication date of the original Wells stories. Smith offers a brief background and concise plot summary for each story, followed by full discussions of every cinematic incarnation. Each film's entry includes a synopsis, a comparison to the story that inspired it, an in-depth account of its production and marketing, an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, and lastly a numerical rating. The organizational scheme of H. G. Wells on Film allows the reader to easily find information on a particular film or to see the different ways a specific story was adapted for the screen. Smith has a knack for clear and vivid plot summary, and has amassed an impressive amount of information (including some interesting trivia) about the making of each film, including those that no longer survive. The nature of the information provided varies by film, but his broad purview covers production, direction, screenwriting, cinematography, and acting. Numerous illustrations-from movie posters, stills, and lobby cards-supplement the text. Smith's prose is easy to read, if a bit chatty and prone to irrelevant asides (such as how he would improve certain films' plots). Though this book is not intended as a contribution to Wells scholarship or to intellectual history, it is nevertheless disappointing that Smith sometimes offers misleading interpretations of Wells' ideas. This is especially noticeable in his sections on The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau. He describes the former novel's central question as follows: "what will happen if the intellectuals and captains of industry fail to subdue labor, and how can the necessary subduing be achieved?" (11). In actuality, the text addresses a rather different concern, namely the widening gulf between the ruling class and the workers, which Wells feared would lead to humanity's eventual degeneration. He called not for labor's subduing but rather for the reintegration of society's two diverging classes. …
{"title":"H.G. Wells on Film: The Utopian Nightmare","authors":"Elun T. Gabriel","doi":"10.5860/choice.40-3180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.40-3180","url":null,"abstract":"Don G. Smith. H.G. Wells on Film: The Utopian Nightmare. McFarland, 2002. 205 pages; $39.95. Widening Gulf Don G. Smith's H.G. Wells on Film is a reference work covering \"every theatrically released film from 1909 to 1997 (both credited and unaccredited) based on the writings of H.G. Wells\" (2). By casting his net so broadly, Smith reveals how frequently filmmakers have drawn on Wells' ideas over the last century (the book covers over forty films). At the same time, only a few of these motion picture adaptations actually addressed any of the stories' central concerns. This book is organized chronologically by the publication date of the original Wells stories. Smith offers a brief background and concise plot summary for each story, followed by full discussions of every cinematic incarnation. Each film's entry includes a synopsis, a comparison to the story that inspired it, an in-depth account of its production and marketing, an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, and lastly a numerical rating. The organizational scheme of H. G. Wells on Film allows the reader to easily find information on a particular film or to see the different ways a specific story was adapted for the screen. Smith has a knack for clear and vivid plot summary, and has amassed an impressive amount of information (including some interesting trivia) about the making of each film, including those that no longer survive. The nature of the information provided varies by film, but his broad purview covers production, direction, screenwriting, cinematography, and acting. Numerous illustrations-from movie posters, stills, and lobby cards-supplement the text. Smith's prose is easy to read, if a bit chatty and prone to irrelevant asides (such as how he would improve certain films' plots). Though this book is not intended as a contribution to Wells scholarship or to intellectual history, it is nevertheless disappointing that Smith sometimes offers misleading interpretations of Wells' ideas. This is especially noticeable in his sections on The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau. He describes the former novel's central question as follows: \"what will happen if the intellectuals and captains of industry fail to subdue labor, and how can the necessary subduing be achieved?\" (11). In actuality, the text addresses a rather different concern, namely the widening gulf between the ruling class and the workers, which Wells feared would lead to humanity's eventual degeneration. He called not for labor's subduing but rather for the reintegration of society's two diverging classes. …","PeriodicalId":51888,"journal":{"name":"Film History","volume":"60 1","pages":"86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89482665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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