Cinema

Fülszöveg

CINEMA
THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS
DAVID SHIPMAN
On 1 February 1893 Thomas Alva Edison completed the first film studio, a hut on a pivot which could be rotated to follow the sun. The first film came later the same year, when a camera caught one of Edison's assistants mid-sneeze. From this inauspicious, low-budget start has grown a medium that has influenced world history as powerfully as history has influenced it. In Cinema: The First Hundred Years David Shipman takes a year-by-year look at cinema's phenomenal growth. With profound expertise and no little wit, the author describes the best — and worst - films from every year. There is the 1907, sixteen-scene version of Ben Hur; the classics of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca; the multimillion dollar blockbusters of today. Shipman's search is exhaustive and the 5.000 films included come not just from Hollywood but from ail over the world. Then there are the film stars who are the single most... Tovább

Fülszöveg

CINEMA
THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS
DAVID SHIPMAN
On 1 February 1893 Thomas Alva Edison completed the first film studio, a hut on a pivot which could be rotated to follow the sun. The first film came later the same year, when a camera caught one of Edison's assistants mid-sneeze. From this inauspicious, low-budget start has grown a medium that has influenced world history as powerfully as history has influenced it. In Cinema: The First Hundred Years David Shipman takes a year-by-year look at cinema's phenomenal growth. With profound expertise and no little wit, the author describes the best — and worst - films from every year. There is the 1907, sixteen-scene version of Ben Hur; the classics of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca; the multimillion dollar blockbusters of today. Shipman's search is exhaustive and the 5.000 films included come not just from Hollywood but from ail over the world. Then there are the film stars who are the single most important factor in determining a film's success or failure: Buster Keaton, Rudolf Valentino, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich; and contemporary names such as Eddie Murphy and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can command fees that would have kept a studio in business for a whole year during Hollywood's Golden Age.
None of these stars would have risen, however, were it not for the staggering technical developments that have taken place in cinema over the last hundred years. David Shipman charts these in every detail, from the earliest trick photography at the turn of the century, through the advent of sound and then of Technicolor, to the miraculous modem high-tech effects. Binding the whole together is the political and economic background to the period, which so shaped film makers' output. The century's films also offer an intriguing insight into social changes. They demonstrate and reflect our attitudes towards sex, religion and racism, as well as reveal our shifting tastes in fashion, architecture, interior design, travel and language.
A gold-mine of information. Cinema: The First Hundred Years gives a comprehensive overview of cinema and its unique place in twentieth-century history.
With 200 colour and 300 black-and-white photographs. Vissza