Peter Lev: The Fifties: Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959

Peter Lev: The Fifties: Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959 

Publisher: University of California Press (2006)

ISBN: 9780520249660

Pages: 396|djvu|3mb

Description: 

Completing the landmark, award-winning, ten-volume series on the first century of American film, The Fifties covers a particularly tumultuous period. Peter Lev explores the divorce of movie studios from their theater chains; the panic of the blacklist era; the explosive emergence of science fiction as the dominant genre (The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds); the rise of television and Hollywood's response to the new medium, as seen in widescreen spectacles (The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur) and mature Westerns (High Noon, Shane, The Searchers). The richly detailed text elucidates a number of emerging trends as Hollywood, with its familiar stars and genres, reached out as an industry to the newly acknowledged "teenage" generation with rock and roll films, and movies as diverse as Rebel Without a Cause and Gidget.

The 10-volume, illustrated series considers the film industry from its early roots in the 19th century right up to 1990. It examines the development of film and the film industry, analyzing both the genres, themes and technology that defined each decade and the political and economic background that gave rise to them. Each volume focuses on a separate decade, providing a narrative on the evolution of both the business and the art of film in America. Each volume is heavily illustrated, and ends with several indexes, notes, a bibliography and a variety of appendixes of top-grossing films, stars and Oscar winners, and more. 

• History of the American Cinema: The Emergence of the Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Volume 1
• History of the American Cinema: The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915. Volume 2
• History of the American Cinema: An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Volume 3
• History of the American Cinema: The Talkies: U.S. Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. Volume 4
• History of the American Cinema: Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939. Volume 5
• History of the American Cinema: Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s. Volume 6
• History of the American Cinema: The Fifties: Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959. Volume 7
• History of the American Cinema: The Sixties: 1960-1969. Volume 8
• History of the American Cinema: Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Age of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. Volume 9
• History of the American Cinema: A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electric Rainbow, 1980-1989. Volume 10

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