American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations
Authors and Contributors      Edited by Professor Murray Pomerance
SeriesScreen Decades
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:272
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
Category/GenreFilm theory and criticism
Individual film directors and film-makers
ISBN/Barcode 9781845204372
ClassificationsDewey:791.430973
Audience
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations 33 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index

Publishing Details

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint Berg Publishers
Publication Date 1 December 2005
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

America in the 1950s was a place of sensational commercial possibility coupled with dark nuclear fears and conformist politics. Cold war hysteria and anti-communist witch hunts influenced a culture already falling under the spell of suburbia, television and a brave new world of luxury goods.Throughout the decade Hollywood was under siege: from the Justice Department pressing for big film companies to divest themselves of their theatre holdings; from the middle classes, whose retreat to family entertainment inside the home drastically decreased the film-going audience; and from the House Un-American Activities Committee, attempting to purge the country of dissenting political views. This tumultuous decade also saw some of Hollywoods most talented filmmakers - John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray and Billy Wilder - producing some of the best-loved movies in the history of cinema, including From Here to Eternity, Sunset Boulevard., Singin' in the Rain, Shane, Rear Window, and Rebel Without a Cause.

Author Biography

Murray Pomerance is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University, which he chairs. He is editor of the Horizons of Cinema series at SUNY Press and co-editor, with Lester D. Friedman, of the Screen Decades series in which this volume appears.