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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, they depicted social class structures, capitalist desires and the expansion of the marketplace. And they turned 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 the films that the studios provided for them.
Homer B. Pettey is Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at the University of Arizona.
Cover image: The Thrill of It All, 1963 © Universal Pictures
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ISBN 978-1-4744-1294-0
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List of 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 Sikov4. The Small Adult Film: A Prestige Form of Cold War Cinema;
R. Barton Palmer5. "I'm Lucky - I Had Rich Parents": Disability and Class in the Postwar Biopic Genre;
Martin F. Norden6. Rogue Nation, 1954: History, Class Consciousness, and the 'Rogue Cop' Film;
Robert Miklitsch7. Internal Enmity: Hollywood's Fragile Home Stories in the 1950s and 1960s;
Elisabeth Bronfen8. Suburban Sublime;
Homer B. Pettey9. Domestic Containment for Whom? Gendered and Racial Variations on Cold War: Modernity in the Apartment Plot;
Pamela Robertson Wojcik10. Success and the Single Girl: Urban Romances of Working Women;
Jennifer Lei Jenkins11. Paris Loves Lovers and Americans Loved Paris: Gender, Class, and Modernity in the Postwar Hollywood Musical;
Steven Cohan12. Straight to Baby: Scoring female jazz agency and new masculinity in Henry Mancini's
Peter Gunn;
Kristin McGeeIndex
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.).
Summary
With case studies of the Cold War comedy, the 'rogue cop' film, the brainwashing thriller and the urban romances, '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.
