A Modernist Cinema - Film Art from 1914 to 1941

In A Modernist Cinema, sixteen distinguished scholars in the field of the New Modernist Studies explore the interrelationships among cinema, modernism across the arts, and modernity in the period 1914 to 1941. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on at least one influential film by a major director from Europe, America, or Asia, including Pastrone, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Hitchcock, Murnau, Dreyer, Vertov, Buñuel, Ozu, Ford Renior, Chaplin, Riefenstahl, and Welles. Contributors explore the formal and aesthetic qualities silent and early sound films in relation to their social, cultural, and political context and with particular attention to the challenges, crises, and promise of modern life in the first half of the 20th century.