An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War
The film critic’s sweeping analysis of American cinema in the Cold War era is both “utterly compulsive reading [and] majestic” in its “breadth and rigor” (Film Comment).
 
An Army of Phantoms is a major work of film history and cultural criticism by leading film critic J. Hoberman. Tracing the dynamic interplay between politics and popular culture, Hoberman offers “the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
 
By “tell[ing] the story not just of what’s on the screen but of what played out behind it,” Hoberman demonstrates how the nation’s deep-seated fears and wishes were projected onto the big screen. In this far-reaching work of historical synthesis, Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe (The American Scholar).
 
From cavalry Westerns to apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars; from movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
 
“An epic . . . alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.” —Cineaste
 
“There’s something majestic about the reach of Hoberman’s ambitions, the breadth and rigor of his research, and especially the curatorial vision brought to historical data.” —Film Comment
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An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War
The film critic’s sweeping analysis of American cinema in the Cold War era is both “utterly compulsive reading [and] majestic” in its “breadth and rigor” (Film Comment).
 
An Army of Phantoms is a major work of film history and cultural criticism by leading film critic J. Hoberman. Tracing the dynamic interplay between politics and popular culture, Hoberman offers “the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
 
By “tell[ing] the story not just of what’s on the screen but of what played out behind it,” Hoberman demonstrates how the nation’s deep-seated fears and wishes were projected onto the big screen. In this far-reaching work of historical synthesis, Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe (The American Scholar).
 
From cavalry Westerns to apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars; from movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
 
“An epic . . . alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.” —Cineaste
 
“There’s something majestic about the reach of Hoberman’s ambitions, the breadth and rigor of his research, and especially the curatorial vision brought to historical data.” —Film Comment
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An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

by J. Hoberman
An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

by J. Hoberman

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Overview

The film critic’s sweeping analysis of American cinema in the Cold War era is both “utterly compulsive reading [and] majestic” in its “breadth and rigor” (Film Comment).
 
An Army of Phantoms is a major work of film history and cultural criticism by leading film critic J. Hoberman. Tracing the dynamic interplay between politics and popular culture, Hoberman offers “the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
 
By “tell[ing] the story not just of what’s on the screen but of what played out behind it,” Hoberman demonstrates how the nation’s deep-seated fears and wishes were projected onto the big screen. In this far-reaching work of historical synthesis, Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe (The American Scholar).
 
From cavalry Westerns to apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars; from movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
 
“An epic . . . alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.” —Cineaste
 
“There’s something majestic about the reach of Hoberman’s ambitions, the breadth and rigor of his research, and especially the curatorial vision brought to historical data.” —Film Comment

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781595587275
Publisher: New Press, The
Publication date: 07/19/2019
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 258
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

J. Hoberman is the author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books, including The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties (The New Press) and Film After Film (Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?). He has written for Artforum, Bookforum, the London Review ofBooks, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times; has taught cinema history at Cooper Union since 1990; and was, for over thirty years, a film critic for the Village Voice. He lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt


From the Introduction:

The collective drama that An Army of Phantoms recounts was not restricted to America's movie theaters but played out in the press, comic books, popular music, ongoing FBI investigations, congressional hearings, and political campaigns. Thanks to the movies, however, this drama was elevated to a cosmic struggle against National Insecurity for possession of the Great Whatzit. The war was waged in desert surrounding Fort Apache and the streets of Hadleyville, as well as the hills of Korea and halls of Washington, D.C., and invoked all manner of imaginary beings. In the national Dream Life, this war was fought by archetypal figures: the Christian Soldier and the Patriot Roughneck were pitted against an Implacable Alien Other, as well as the Wild One, and sometimes themselves.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From God's Mouth to Your Ear
Prologue: Mission for Hollywood—Stalingrad to V-J Day

I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946–47
MGM's Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End?
When HUAC Came to Hollywood …
Showtime (“Hooray for Robert Taylor!”)
Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up

II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948–50
The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins
Fort Apache, Our Home
Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning
“The Saucers Are Real!” (And Guilty of Treason)
Sunset/Panic/In a Lonely Place
Countdown

III. Redskin Menace from Outer Space: America at War, 1950–52
Across Rio Grande … into Manchuria?
This Is Korea?
The Communist Was a Thing for the FBI!
Three Cases: Joseph L., Carl F., and Elia Kazan
Campaign '52: Take Us to Our Leader, Big Jim
High Noon in the Universe

IV. The PaxAmericanArama: Eisenhower Power, 1953–55
“No One on This Earth Can Help You”: Above and Beyond and Fantasies of Invasion
The Hammer, the Witch Trials, and Pickup on South Street
After Quo Vadis: Onward Christian Soldier, Watch Out for The Wild One
Marilyn Ascends, Joe Goes Down
Sh-Boom Them! (DeMillennium Approaching …)

V. Searchin': America on the Road, 1955–56
Coonskin Kids, or the Martians Have Landed
On the Brink of the Wild Frontier: Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause
Better Red Than Dead: Body-Snatched Prisoners of Comanche Mind Control
“That'll Be the Day!” The Spirit of '56

Epilogue: The Face of the Crowd
Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Utterly compulsive reading … There’s something majestic about the reach of Hoberman’s ambitions … An Army of Phantoms may prove to be the definitive text on its subject.”
Film Comment

“An energetic and adventurous book … scholarly, even encyclopedic, yet written occasionally in a style akin to the Hush-Hush columns of L.A. Confidential.”
London Review of Books

“A welcome acknowledgment of how complicated the story of one particular period really is.”
National Review

“An epic: an alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.”
Cineaste

“An important, overflowing and often compelling study of movie history … Smartly conceived, and its richness defies capture in a book review.”
Ha’aretz

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