Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II / Edition 2

by Thomas Doherty

Overview

Thomas Doherty reveals how and why Hollywood marshaled its artistic resources on behalf of the war effort and interprets the cultural meanings and enduring legacies of the motion picture record of the war years. He explains the social, political, and economic forces that created such genre classics as Mrs. Miniver, as well as comedies, musicals, newsreels, documentaries, cartoons, and army training films. He examines the Hollywood Production Code, government propaganda films, the portrayal of women and minorities in films of the period, and Hollywood's role in World War I and Vietnam.

This revised edition includes new sections exploring the recent resurgence of interest in World War II films, including Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line.
Thomas Doherty reveals how and why Hollywood marshaled its artistic resources on behalf of the war effort and interprets the cultural meanings and enduring legacies of the motion picture record of the war years. He explains the social, political, and economic forces that created such genre classics as Mrs. Miniver, as well as comedies, musicals, newsreels, documentaries, cartoons, and army training films. He examines the Hollywood Production Code, government propaganda films, the portrayal of women and minorities in films of the period, and Hollywood's role in World War I and Vietnam.

This revised edition includes new sections exploring the recent resurgence of interest in World War II films, including Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231116350
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/02/1999
Series:	Film and Culture Series
Edition description:	revised and updated edition
Pages:	381
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 6.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Thomas Doherty is associate professor of the American Studies Department and chair of the Film Studies Program at Brandeis University. He is author of Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (Columbia, 1999) and Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilizatzion of American Movies in the 1950s, and is associate editor of the film journal Cinéaste.

Table of Contents

1. Hollywood's War
2. Leni Riefenstahl's Contribution to the American War Effort
3. Production Codes
4. Government Work
5. Genre Work
6. Properly Directed Hatred
7. Women Without Men
8. Keep 'Em Laughing
9. The Negro Soldier
10. The Real War
11. Legacies

What People are Saying About This

Paul Fussell

Thorough, thoughtful, sophisticated, and technically well-informed. This is the best book on this fascinating subject.

— Paul Fussell, author of Wartime: Understanding Behavior in the Second World War

Editorial Reviews

A wide-ranging, lively study which combines close readings of various key films with discussions of genre, ethnicity, and beauracracy.... [A] vivid blend of polemic and social history.

Times Literary Supplement

A wide-ranging, lively study which combines close readings of various key films with discussions of genre, ethnicity, and beauracracy.... [A] vivid blend of polemic and social history.

Time Magazines Literary Supplement

Thorough, thoughtful, sophisticated, and technically well-informed. This is the best book on this fascinating subject.

Paul Fussell

Doherty´s wise, witty, well-researched book amounts in fact to one of the best studies in years of American civilization in general.

Film Comment