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Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American Civil War have provided the setting, ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of morality, race, gender, and nation. Nineteen essays explore all these issues; spanning a wide range of films...
List of contents
Introduction: "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory . . . ": The Civil War in the American Popular Imagination
Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller
1. America's Civil War: Hollywood vs. History
Earl E. Mulderink III
2. When Silence Was Golden: Civil War Films Before The Birth of a Nation
Kayla McKinney Wiggins & Michael Wiggins
3. Not a Lost Cause: the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Race Relations in The Birth of A Nation (1915) and Free State of Jones (2016)
Sue Matheson
4. Cornering the Last Rebel: The Confederate Soldier in American Film
Paul Haspel
5. Silent Comedy as Social Criticism: A Textual Analysis of The General (1926)
Douglas Brode
6. Screen Historian and American Myth Maker?: The Civil War According to John Ford
Scott Allen Nollen, with Douglas Brode
7. The North, the South; Black Folks, White Folks: Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
Kathy Merlock Jackson and Ray Merlock
8. Hidden Behind Hoopskirts: The Many Women of Hollywood's Civil War
Rosanne Welch
9. The Golden Age of Hollywood's Belles: Is Tomorrow, After All, Another Day?
Biljana Oklop¿i¿
10. Gender, War and Sisterhood in the Novel and Film Versions of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
Fran Pheasant-Kelly
11. Literary and Cinematic Canon Fire: John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage (1951)
Guerric DeBona, OSB
12. Adapting The Killer Angels: Historical Accuracy versus Poetic Vision in Gettysburg
Peggy A. Russo
13. Whiteness, Whiteness Everywhere: Walt Disney's Civil War Productions
Susan Aronstein and Jeanne Holland
14. (Re-)Visionist History in Sergio Leone's (De-)Mythologized Old West: The Civil War, Vietnam, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
David S. Silverman
15. The Civil War as TV Miniseries: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
Judith Sobré
16. Documentary as an Art Form: Ken Burns' "Creative" Dramatization of the Civil War
Martin J. Manning, with Douglas Brode
17. Strange Homecomings: Hollywood and the Narrative of the Warrior's Return
Gregory Perrault
18. Featuring Atrocity & H8ful Heritage: Tarantino's Revision of Civil War Mythology
Beth Jane Toren
19. Brother Against . . . Monster: Hidden Stories of the Civil War
Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper
About the author
Edited by Douglas Brode; Shea T. Brode and Cynthia J. Miller - Contributions by Susan Aronstein; Guerric DeBona; Paul Haspel; Jeanne Holland; Martin Manning; Sue Matheson; Ray Merlock; Kathy Merlock Jackson; Earl F. Mulderink III; Scott Allen Nollen; Bilj
Summary
Iconic, tough-but-tender Boston PI Spenser delves into the black market art scene to investigate a decades-long unsolved crime of dangerous proportions.
The heist was legendary, still talked about twenty years after the priceless paintings disappeared from one of Boston's premier art museums. Most thought the art was lost forever, buried deep, sold off overseas, or, worse, destroyed as incriminating evidence. But when paint chips from the most valuable piece stolen, Gentlemen in Black by a Spanish master, arrives at the desk of a Boston journalist, the museum finds hope and enlists Spenser's help.
Soon the cold art case thrusts Spenser into the shady world of black market art dealers, aged Mafia bosses, and old vendettas. A five-million-dollar-reward by the museum's top benefactor, an aged, unlikable Boston socialite, sets Spenser and pals Vinnie Morris and Hawk onto a trail of hidden secrets, jailhouse confessions, and decades-old murders.
Set against the high-society art scene and the low-life back alleys of Boston, this is classic Spenser doing what he does best.
