{"id":38245,"date":"2017-11-15T09:29:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T15:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=38245"},"modified":"2017-11-15T10:11:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T16:11:39","slug":"the-fabulous-forties-once-more-reinventing-hollywood-spreads-out-on-the-net","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/15\/the-fabulous-forties-once-more-reinventing-hollywood-spreads-out-on-the-net\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fabulous Forties once more: REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD spreads out on the Net"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Daisy Kenyon<\/strong> (1947).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, when I was in New York for the Museum of the Moving Image series<\/a> based on Reinventing Hollywood<\/em>, I also met with Violet Lucca, who runs the admirable Film Comment<\/em> podcast<\/a>. She and Imogen Sara Smith talked with me about the book. Our conversation is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our session helped me to develop, somewhat babblingly, points I only touched on in the book. For example, there’s the idea that 1940s films aimed at a certain “novelistic” density (or heaviness, if you’re not sympathetic to them). That’s opposed to the fast-paced “theatricality” of many 1930s films. Of course there are exceptions, and complete outliers like\u00a0The Sin of Nora Moran<\/em>, a favorite of mine<\/a> that Imogen mentioned.<\/p>\n

Likewise, I got to reemphasize how filmmakers transformed conventions from fiction, theatre, and radio. And Violet and Imogen were right to draw me out on the role of the screenwriter, which I emphasized more than in my previous research.<\/p>\n

It was not only fun but illuminating. Violet and Imogen are very knowledgeable and offered me many good ideas that expanded or nuanced things I tried to say. For example, Violet asked whether the \u00a0“competitive cooperation” of the 1940s has an echo today. That seems right. Imogen suggested that the emergence of voice-over allowed actors to develop an impassive, internalized acting style characteristic of the 1940s. I wish I’d thought of that. In fact,\u00a0I wish I’d talked with this pair before I wrote the book.<\/p>\n

And yes, Daisy Kenyon<\/em> is involved.<\/p>\n

Also a click away from you is an extract from the book put up on Lapham’s Quarterly<\/em><\/a>. It pulls a section from the first chapter<\/a> about how amnesia works in popular storytelling. Maybe you’ll find it interesting.<\/p>\n

Finally, Daniel Hodges kindly spotlighted Reinventing Hollywood<\/em> in his very serious, in-depth website<\/a> devoted to problems of film noir. While my book doesn’t say much about noir, since that wasn’t an operative category for creators of the period, my discussion of the woman-in-peril plot chimes with his very detailed study<\/a> of many films in this vein. In addition, Daniel offers subtle suggestions about less-discussed sources of noir visual style<\/a>, and he makes a strong case for spy films<\/a> as being as important to the trend as hardboiled detective stories.<\/p>\n

\n

Thanks to Violet and Imogen for a very enjoyable hour, to Daniel for the link, to Lapham’s Quarterly<\/em>, and to Rodney Powell and Melinda Kennedy of the University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sin of Nora Moran<\/strong> (1933).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daisy Kenyon (1947). DB here: A couple of weeks ago, when I was in New York for the Museum of the Moving Image series based on Reinventing Hollywood, I also met with Violet Lucca, who runs the admirable Film Comment podcast. She and Imogen Sara Smith talked with me about the book. Our conversation is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,12,6,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1940s-hollywood","category-film-history","category-film-industry","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38245"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38258,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38245\/revisions\/38258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}