Reinventing Hollywood
How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling
by David Bordwell
1st Edition
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Book Details
| Print ISBN | 9780226639550 |
| eText ISBN | 9780226487892 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
| Publishing Year | 2017 |
| Edition | 1st Edition |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 592 |
Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling, 1st Edition, is a book that examines how American cinema reshaped narrative craft during the 1940s. David Bordwell analyzes how commercial studio filmmakers adopted ambitious storytelling experiments that permanently altered movie conventions.
The book explores the widespread use of innovative techniques, such as unpredictable flashbacks, voice-over commentary, and scenes shown from conflicting viewpoints. It also follows how screenplays visualized subjective inner states through dreams, memories, and hallucinations, fostering the emergence of the psychological thriller.
In tracing these creative developments, Bordwell connects the decade's narrative innovations to contemporary cinema, demonstrating their enduring influence on modern directors such as Christopher Nolan.
Table of Contents
Chapter Introduction: The Way Hollywood Told It
Chapter 1: The Frenzy of Five Fat Years
Chapter Interlude: Spring 1940: Lessons from _Our Town_
Chapter 2: Time and Time Again
Chapter Interlude: Kitty and Lydia, Julia and Nancy
Chapter 3: Plots: The Menu
Chapter Interlude: Schema and Revision, between Rounds
Chapter 4: Slices, Strands, and Chunks
Chapter Interlude: Mankiewicz: Modularity and Polyphony
Chapter 5: What They Didn’t Know Was
Chapter Interlude: Identity Thieves and Tangled Networks
Chapter 6: Voices out of the Dark
Chapter Interlude: Remaking Middlebrow Modernism
Chapter 7: Into the Depths
Chapter 8: Call It Psychology
Chapter Interlude: Innovation by Misadventure
Chapter 9: From the Naked City to Bedford Falls
Chapter 10: I Love a Mystery
Chapter Interlude: Sturges, or Showing the Puppet Strings
Chapter 11: Artifice in Excelsis
Chapter Interlude: Hitchcock and Welles: The Lessons of the Masters
Chapter Conclusion: The Way Hollywood Keeps Telling It
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