432 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
studying specific moments, movements, and phe-
nomena. Jeanine Basinger’s The Star Machine(New
York: Knopf, 2007), for example, provides a master-
ful account of how the Hollywood studio system
during a very specific era (the so-called “golden
age”) created its stars. C. S. Tashiro’s Pretty Pictures:
Production Design and the History of Film(Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1998) limits its scope to
focus on one aspect of film production—production
design—even as it ranges widely over the full
chronology of film history. In both broad and spe-
cific studies, the film historian is interested equally
in change—those developments that have altered
the course of film history—and stability—those
aspects that have defied change. Film history is
not, to quote film historians Robert C. Allen and
Douglas Gomery, “a list of film titles or an academ-What Is Film History?
In just over a hundred years, the cinema, like the clas-
sical art forms that have preceded it—architecture,
fiction, poetry, drama, dance, painting, and music—
has developed its own aesthetics, conventions,
influence, and, of course, history. Broadly defined,
film history traces the development of moving
images from early experiments with image repro-
duction and photography through the invention
of the movies in the early 1890s and subsequent
stylistic, financial, technological, and social devel-
opments in cinema that have occurred up to now.
To get some idea of the scope and depth of that
record, you might browse through a comprehen-
sive history of film, such as the ten-volume History
of American Cinema series (University of California
Press). Such comprehensive histories take many
years, and often the efforts of many people, to get
written. Because of this, most film historians don’t
undertake such massive projects. Most people who
practice film history instead focus their energies on
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be
able to
✔understand the basic approaches to study-
ing film history.
✔appreciate how different movements—
groups of artists working to advance a
shared cause—shaped film history.
✔understand how the general state of the
filmmaking art at any moment in film his-
tory may help to explain how and why a
movie was made the way it was.
✔describe the chronological breakdown of
film history and identify its major achieve-
ments.
✔explain how unique directors and movies
have expanded our understanding of the
medium and its potential as an art.
✔understand how major historical events
may affect how and why movies are made.A major turning point in film historyBilly Wilder’s
Sunset Boulevard(1950) is a haunting film noir about film
history. Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), an aging silent-
movie star who (in the 1950s) still represents the glamour
and allure of the silent era, hopes to revive her career in the
sound era with the help of Joe Gillis (William Holden), an
aspiring screenwriter. Her fantasies are apparent in one of
her most famous (and unintentionally funny) lines: “I am big.
It’s the movies that got small.” Unfortunately, she isn’t big
anymore, and the movies just kept getting bigger and better
after the conversion to sound, one of the major turning
points in film history. All Desmond has left is her dreams, and
Sunset Boulevardis all the more poignant because Gloria
Swanson herself was actually one of the greatest stars of the
silent era.