David Bordwell is one of the outstanding film scholars of his generation. Throughout his exceptional career, he has been primarily concerned with aesthetic questions related to film as a narrative art. But he recognizes how those aesthetic questions are related to the complex Hollywood system, in which art and commerce are inextricably intertwined; in order to understand the artistry, it is necessary to understand the system. "Reinventing Hollywood" is the culmination of his efforts to analyze the components of that ...
Read More
David Bordwell is one of the outstanding film scholars of his generation. Throughout his exceptional career, he has been primarily concerned with aesthetic questions related to film as a narrative art. But he recognizes how those aesthetic questions are related to the complex Hollywood system, in which art and commerce are inextricably intertwined; in order to understand the artistry, it is necessary to understand the system. "Reinventing Hollywood" is the culmination of his efforts to analyze the components of that narrative artistry. Bordwell's aim is to provide an anatomy of the "vast storytelling ecosystem" of 1940s Hollywood, to catalogue and to explain what went into the construction of the narratives that made films of that era so so distinctive. In his introduction, he presents the major focus and themes of the book, followed by a chapter that provides an historical framework for the adaptations and innovations he discusses in the remaining ten chapters. Interspersed among these general chapters are nine "interludes" in which he discusses a few important films or the work of innovative directors. A concluding chapter considers the legacy of this period for later filmmakers. In brief, this is an outstanding work by a major scholar who is also an exceptional writer. It is destined to be a classic, "the" book for both scholars and general readers on the narrative art of Hollywood in its heyday.
Read Less
