Description
This book is about classic Hollywood films and how the details in these films can tell us a lot about them. The author, Robert Ray, works with each letter of the alphabet to produce at least one entry for every letter of the alphabet in this book. This book is a primer on classic Hollywood films and can teach people a lot about these films.
Speaking about the kind of filmmaking now known as Classic Hollywood, the most popular and influential cinema ever invented, Vincente Minnelli once gave away its secret: "I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things. They're things that the audience is not conscious of, but that accumulate." What are those hidden things? Can we invent a method that will enable us to discover them? Robert Ray attempts to answer those questions by looking closely at four movies from the 1930-1945 period when the American studio system reached the peak of its economic and cultural power:
Grand Hotel, The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, and
Meet Me in St. Louis. To avoid the predictable generalizations that have plagued film studies, Ray works with the movies' details-
Grand Hotel's room assignments or
Meet Me in St. Louis's ketchup-which are treated as mysterious but promising clues. By producing at least one entry for every letter of the alphabet, Ray demonstrates that a movie's details have much to tell us.
The ABCs of Classic Hollywood is a movie primer, a deceptively simple book that spells out a fascinating account of the most powerful storytelling system ever designed.
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