Wheeler Winston Dixon
21st-Century Hollywood
Movies in the Era of Transformation
21st-Century Hollywood introduces readers to the global transformations of today's movies and describes the decisive roles that Hollywood is playing in determining the digital future for world cinema. It offers clear, concise explanations of a major paradigm shift that continues to reshape our relationship to the moving image. Filled with numerous detailed examples, the book will both educate and entertain film students and movie fans alike.
- Copyright year: 2011
Visions of Paradise
Images of Eden in the Cinema
Depictions of sex, violence, and crime abound in many of today's movies, sometimes making it seem that the idyllic life has vanished-even from our imaginations. But as shown in this unique book, paradise has not always been lost. For many years, depictions of heaven, earthly paradises, and utopias were common in popular films.
Illustrated throughout with intriguing, rare stills and organized to provide historical context, Visions of Paradise surveys a huge array of films that have offered us glimpses of life free from strife, devoid of pain and privation, and full of harmony. In films such as Moana, White Shadows in the South Seas, The Green Pastures, Heaven Can Wait, The Enchanted Forest, The Bishop's Wife, Carousel, Bikini Beach, and Elvira Madigan, characters and the audience partake in a vision of personal freedom and safety-a zone of privilege and protection that transcends the demands of daily existence.
Many of the films discussed are from the 1960s-perhaps the most edenic decade in contemporary cinema, when everything seemed possible and radical change was taken for granted. As Dixon makes clear, however, these films have not disappeared with the dreams of a generation; they continue to resonate today, offering a tonic to the darker visions that have replaced them.
- Copyright year: 2006
American Cinema of the 1940s
Themes and Variations
- Copyright year: 2005
Black and White Cinema
A Short History
- Copyright year: 2015
Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia
- Copyright year: 2009
Cinema and Modernity
In Cinema and Modernity, Murray Pomerance brings together new essays by seventeen leading scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. Among the many films considered are Detour, Shock Corridor, The Last Laugh, and Experiment in Terror.
- Copyright year: 2006
Death of the Moguls
The End of Classical Hollywood
Death of the Moguls is a detailed assessment of the last days of the “rulers of film” from Hollywood’s classical era. Using rare, behind-the-scenes stills, Wheeler Winston Dixon details such game-changing factors as the de Havilland decision, the Consent Decree, how the moguls dealt with their collapsing empires in the era of television, and the end of the conventional studio assembly line to create a compelling narrative of the end of the studio system at each of the Hollywood majors.
Film Talk
Directors at Work
A medley of directors including those working in pop culture and documentary, as well as feminist filmmakers, social satirists, and Hollywood mavericks recount stories that have never before been published. Among them are Monte Hellman, the auteur of the minimalist masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop; Albert Maysles, who with his late brother David, created some of the most important documentaries of the 1960s, including Salesman and The Beatles: What's Happening?; Robert Downey Sr., whose social satires Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace paved the way for a generation of filmmakers; Bennett Miller, whose film Capote won an Academy Award in 2005; and Jamie Babbit, a lesbian crossover director whose low-budget film But I'm a Cheerleader! became a mainstream hit.
- Copyright year: 2007
A History of Horror, 2nd Edition
- Copyright year: 2023
A Short History of Film, Fourth Edition
The history of international cinema is now available in a concise, conveniently sized, and affordable volume. Succinct yet comprehensive, A Short History of Film, Fourth Edition provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present. More than 250 rare stills and illustrations accompany the text, bringing readers face to face with many of the key players and films that have marked the industry.
- Copyright year: 2026
City That Never Sleeps
New York and the Filmic Imagination
- Copyright year: 2007
A Short History of Film, Third Edition
- Copyright year: 2018