Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties
The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher--Television
$55.71
- Hardcover
672 pages
- Release Date
14 November 2023
Summary
Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios; the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ult…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307958921 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0307958922 |
| Author: | Foster Hirsch |
| Publisher: | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Imprint: | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 672 |
| Release Date: | 14 November 2023 |
| Weight: | 1.02kg |
| Dimensions: | 41mm x 169mm x 243mm |
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Critics Review
“Sweeping, winningly eccentric … a study that manages to be both personal and comprehensive. A lot more fun than Netflix and chill, especially as related by Hirsch’s photographic memory … a big, ambitious film history book, broad, sweeping and somehow still intimate survey.” —Chris Vognar, LA Times
“Entertaining … A celebration.” —Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
“… Teeming … fascinating detail … in which moviegoing is treated as an experience, of which the movie itself is only a part … . Hirsch praises many good and often overlooked films … and explores idiosyncratic genres, such as ancient-world epics and low-budget sci-fi. When Hirsch is passionate about a movie, such as Douglas Sirk’s “Imitation of Life,” his fervor is matched by eloquence and an eye for detail … He discusses the wider culture of the time, finding in fifties America “the seeds of the counterculture revolution that erupted in the late 1960s,” with movies as a vital part of that trend … a wide-ranging critical history that can uncontroversially celebrate the best of these movies as key works of modern art.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Hirsch reassesses many stereotypes about filmmaking in the 1950s, arguably the United States’ peak of social and political influence. Knowledgeable, astute, and sometimes provocative … remarkable.”—Frederick J. Augustyn, Jr., Library Journal
“A thorough account of a transformative era in Hollywood history … a panoramic scope … managing the difficult feat of being exhaustive without becoming exhausting. Cinephiles will want to dig into this.” —Publishers Weekly
Foster Hirsch
Foster Hirsch is a professor of film at Brooklyn College and the author of sixteen books on film and theater, including Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, and A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio. He lives in New York City.
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