America on Film: Hollywood and American History - Hardcover

Kenneth Cameron

9780826410337: America on Film: Hollywood and American History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826410332 ISBN 13: 9780826410337

Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group, 1997

Can we view our history - an by implications ourselves - through the movies? Is there a relationship between good history and good film-making? How does Hollywood view America's past? The challenge of making the great American historical film has attracted some of the finest talents: D.W. Griffith, John Ford, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Spike Lee. From the earliest flickering images of "The Spirit of '76" (1905) through to "Nixon", this book examines Hollywood's filming of American history, including biographies.

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From Library Journal:

Can movies reflect history and still entertain? Do movies sometimes make history? How do we understand that after D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking but racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation opened, interest and membership in the KKK increased? These books grapple with such questions, albeit in an uninspired way. Cameron (Africa on Film, Continuum, 1996) takes a broad view, critiquing films by decade and classifying them by genres. Gaps are bound to occur in such a survey, but this book has too many curious inclusions and significant omissions. The format doesn't allow for decades like the Sixties, during the course of which the social and political tone of films changed greatly. Cameron has little new or interesting to say about the films he reviews. Burgoyne (film studies, Wayne State Univ.) chooses a narrower focus, covering five recent films (e.g., Glory and Forrest Gump) and examining how they treat issues of race, culture, national identity, and the American experience. The book errs in selecting two films by Oliver Stone (JFK and Born on the Fourth of July), and one feels the recent Last of the Mohicans could have yielded a more lively discussion. The language here is pretentious and exhausting, while the insights are modest. These two books are not necessary additions to film collections; libraries should consider Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (LJ 8/95) as an alternative purchase.?Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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