Overview

By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from around thirty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history. Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era's restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films-some well-known, others obscure-including J. Stuart Blackton's The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley's The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.'s Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank's Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past.

Full Product Details

9780231222570

Table of Contents

Reviews

Thomas Doherty is a first-rate historian and an entertaining writer—an unusual and enviable skillset. How Film Became History tells a series of fascinating, little-known stories that promise to reshape our understanding of 1930s American film and culture. -- Jon Lewis, professor of film studies, Oregon State University A richly detailed excavation of the forgotten documentaries of the 1930s—films that shaped culture, politics, and history in ways still felt today. Thomas Doherty once again proves himself a master historian of American cinema. -- Chris Yogerst, author, columnist, and media historian

Author Information

Thomas Doherty is professor of American studies at Brandeis University. His previous Columbia University Press books include Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (2013); Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018); and Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century (2020).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available