Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
I picked up this book on a lark, seeing it featured in the library, and I'm glad that I did. My single undergraduate film class left me interested in the developments of film outside of the apocalyptic genre and gave me some background with which to approach this book, as did the book I recently read on the Hollywood Left in the '30s. Though far from perfect, Dixon and Foster have created an interesting and surprisingly readable history of film fairly easily accessible to those outside the know, and though it does succumb to a few flaws both of academic and film writing, it is a valuable resource for newbies looking to introduce themselves to the history of the cinema. It begins well, with the most hilariously disconnected and selective timeline I have ever seen in my life. Seemingly mundane events are thrown in along with the great historical dates we all know so well, and the best entry involves a death going unnoticed by the media at large. The important event in this syntactic display is, of course, the ignorance and not the death itself. Despite the fact that it is relatively useless before reading the text, it is worth a look nonetheless and does give a good sense of some gradual shifts in culture that do resonate in film history. The text itself begins abruptly, without any overt designs on an overarching thesis and diving quite in to the history of moving pictures, a brief overview that ignores the earth-shattering importance of photography but which nonetheless describes the development of motion picture technology well before moving into more specific films and movements.
The abrupt beginning delivers a jolt that is unfortunately repeated several times throughout the narrative. Though the authors do an excellent and, I assume, fairly comprehensive job of describing cinematic movements (especially where they occur in foreign countries), they often lose the sense of the bigger picture. Though readers can come away with a good understanding of the aesthetics of Italian neorealism, for example, its directors and pictures are jumbled together and span different chapters. The book leaves something to be desired in its organization and jumps around inconsistently; one moment, a director's entire body of work is discussed across artistic movements and decades, whereas in the next a director will be split up according to the time periods he or she was active in. Neither approach is necessarily better but a consistent sense of time and place would go a long way in helping uninitiated readers understand the history of the cinema as a whole instead of trying to follow the authors' logic. Likewise, A Short History of Film also succumbs to the uninteresting and boring repetitiveness of listing film after film, often obscure and without any sort of context. Merely listing a director's resume doesn't do much without an explanation of how their films develop or their relevance to the cinema as a whole. This is a consistent flaw of academic writing, and along with the overuse of "moribund" and "Brechtian" often distracts the reader and unnecessarily draws attention to the authors instead of the material presented.
That material, however, is often well treated and is kept fresh and interesting over 300 pages. The book is just about the perfect length, drawing a good balance between being an overview and presenting some depth and promoting actual understanding. Asinine listing aside, the authors seem to respect the fact that their target audience may have not seen many landmark films and do not throw in self-serving references cryptic to all but devoted film majors. Dixon and Foster have created a lively and comprehensive history of cinema that touches on the major films most have heard of (The Jazz Singer, anyone?) but also discusses the often-forgotten work of women and minorities, to say nothing of its comprehensive and intriguing focus on world film, which is often more experimental and interesting than your typical Hollywood blockbuster fare. Not being an expert on film, I can't speak to the academic authority of this text, but as a representative member of A Short History of Film's target audience, I can say that the book delivers on the promise of its title and will give readers a good picture of the history and development of the cinema, leading right up to 2006 and looking beyond as the era of digital filmmaking continues to dawn upon us.
Grade: B+
The abrupt beginning delivers a jolt that is unfortunately repeated several times throughout the narrative. Though the authors do an excellent and, I assume, fairly comprehensive job of describing cinematic movements (especially where they occur in foreign countries), they often lose the sense of the bigger picture. Though readers can come away with a good understanding of the aesthetics of Italian neorealism, for example, its directors and pictures are jumbled together and span different chapters. The book leaves something to be desired in its organization and jumps around inconsistently; one moment, a director's entire body of work is discussed across artistic movements and decades, whereas in the next a director will be split up according to the time periods he or she was active in. Neither approach is necessarily better but a consistent sense of time and place would go a long way in helping uninitiated readers understand the history of the cinema as a whole instead of trying to follow the authors' logic. Likewise, A Short History of Film also succumbs to the uninteresting and boring repetitiveness of listing film after film, often obscure and without any sort of context. Merely listing a director's resume doesn't do much without an explanation of how their films develop or their relevance to the cinema as a whole. This is a consistent flaw of academic writing, and along with the overuse of "moribund" and "Brechtian" often distracts the reader and unnecessarily draws attention to the authors instead of the material presented.
That material, however, is often well treated and is kept fresh and interesting over 300 pages. The book is just about the perfect length, drawing a good balance between being an overview and presenting some depth and promoting actual understanding. Asinine listing aside, the authors seem to respect the fact that their target audience may have not seen many landmark films and do not throw in self-serving references cryptic to all but devoted film majors. Dixon and Foster have created a lively and comprehensive history of cinema that touches on the major films most have heard of (The Jazz Singer, anyone?) but also discusses the often-forgotten work of women and minorities, to say nothing of its comprehensive and intriguing focus on world film, which is often more experimental and interesting than your typical Hollywood blockbuster fare. Not being an expert on film, I can't speak to the academic authority of this text, but as a representative member of A Short History of Film's target audience, I can say that the book delivers on the promise of its title and will give readers a good picture of the history and development of the cinema, leading right up to 2006 and looking beyond as the era of digital filmmaking continues to dawn upon us.
Grade: B+
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