The Golden Age of Cinema

Rick Jewell has been teaching a course on classical Hollywood moviemaking at USC for some years but has never found a textbook that suited his needs. As a result he has written one, and it's excellent. Jewell has taken on the daunting task of surveying the social history of the period, the business side of Hollywood , changes and advancement in technology, censorship, narrative and style, genres, and the star system. Whew! I can't imagine a better introduction to this subject matter. The book is scrupulously well organized and uses specific examples whenever possible instead of dealing in generalities. Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy (www.leonardmaltin.com) Some believe that American film peaked between the Stock Market Crash and the end of World War II. Richard B. Jewell's The Golden Age of Cinema sharply delineates how the film industry worked during the period, casting light on the movies as business, technology, social document, and popular art. Charles J. Maland, University of Tennessee