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Examines how Cold War films depicted pertinent issues of American social class and gender
From the mid-1940s to the late 1980s American film studios enjoyed commercial success in a range of often overlooked genres, employing a new realism to depict social class structures, capitalist desires and the expansion of the marketplace, and to turn American cultural values comically and subversively against themselves. With case studies of the Cold War comedy, the ‘rogue cop’ film, the brainwashing thriller and the urban romances that defined the ‘new woman’, Cold War Film Genres explores these myriad productions, redefining American cinematic history with a more inclusive view of the types of films that post-war audiences actually enjoyed, and that the studios provided for them.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
1. Introduction: Cold War Genres and the Rock-and-Roll Film; Homer B. Pettey
2. Social Factors in Brainwashing Films of the 1950s and 1960s; David Seed
3. The Berlin Crisis? Piffl!: Billy Wilder’s Cold War Comedy, One, Two, Three; Ed Sikov
4. The Small Adult Film: A Prestige Form of Cold War Cinema; R. Barton Palmer
5. "I’m Lucky – I Had Rich Parents": Disability and Class in the Postwar Biopic Genre; Martin F. Norden
6. Rogue Nation, 1954: History, Class Consciousness, and the ‘Rogue Cop’ Film; Robert Miklitsch
7. Internal Enmity: Hollywood's Fragile Home Stories in the 1950s and 1960s; Elisabeth Bronfen
8. Suburban Sublime; Homer B. Pettey
9. Domestic Containment for Whom? Gendered and Racial Variations on Cold War: Modernity in the Apartment Plot; Pamela Robertson Wojcik
10. Success and the Single Girl: Urban Romances of Working Women; Jennifer Lei Jenkins
11. Paris Loves Lovers and Americans Loved Paris: Gender, Class, and Modernity in the Postwar Hollywood Musical; Steven Cohan
12. Straight to Baby: Scoring female jazz agency and new masculinity in Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn; Kristin McGee
Index
About the Author
Homer B. Pettey is Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at the University of Arizona. He serves as the founding and general editor for Global Film Directors (Rutgers U.P.), Global Film Studios (Edinburgh U.P.), and International Stars (Edinburgh U.P.).
Reviews
'This collection of essays by established film scholars introduces several new perspectives on subgenres of film produced during the Cold War...The volume is noteworthy for the contributors' ability to deftly balance a variety of critical approaches within a single essay: for example, one contributor breaks down dance steps and then links them to the US’s political tensions and pretensions...An accessible and genuinely enjoyable read, this collection will delight readers at all levels.'
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