Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin (eds),
Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method.
Duke University Press, 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-3821-5
US$24.95 (pb)
400pp
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press)

This is a very useful book. It has an introduction which states simply and clearly what it intends to do, and why; then twelve essays which exemplify those aims. The principal purpose of the book is to complement the vast body of textual work done on specific films or groups of films by illustrating the kinds of extra-textual (or more accurately non-filmic) material that are available, and the uses that can be made of that material. It aims, that is, to remind researchers that, however interesting the study of the films themselves may be, there is a far broader field of ‘cinema culture’ that can be equally rewarding to explore.

The twelve essays draw on various forms of institutional archives that are available to researchers: press archives, university archives, production company archives, professional pollsters’ archives, government archives and the archives of circulating film libraries such as that of MOMA. In these can be found records concerning the growth of film studies courses, advertisements and promotional campaigns, records of the viewing patterns and preferences of different audience groups, critical and adulatory reviews of films and film stars, notes concerning production decisions, box office records, and censorship constraints, not to mention the involvement of governmental agencies in fostering the worldwide dominance of Hollywood and in ensuring the moral / political acceptability of Hollywood’s output.

Several of the individual essays explore what could seem marginal or exotic aspects of the field – a largely forgotten woman filmmaker of the early twentieth century, the forms of production and distribution available to 8mm pornographic movies, and the popularity of dish-night at the movies in the 1930s – while others deal with topics that will be of more immediate relevance to a lot of researchers – the photographic origins of American film noir, the production and reception of films made in America by Murnau and Wilder, and the way auteurist techniques were applied to George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg. But whether the specific topics are narrow or broad, recondite or popular, the aim of the book is not to cover the whole field of film culture (as if that were possible) or even the main aspects of it, but rather to exemplify the kinds of work that still remain to be done if we are to properly understand the evolution of cinema culture in America.

Clearly this shift away from textual studies towards extra-textual studies implies a shift away from structuralist and semiotic work, away even from most forms of auteurist or genre work, towards more institutional, more socio-economic and more socio-historical work. There are some particularly interesting questions raised in the various essays: How is childhood constructed and understood in the context of audience surveys, film categorisations and the programming of children’s matinees? What effect did the Supreme Court ruling that legalised the home viewing of pornography have on ‘adult’ films? Could the complaints of an important client nation such as China concerning its representation in American films effectively give it a determining say in what Hollywood produces and how? What strategies did exhibitors mobilise to cope with the abrupt down-turn of box-office takings in the 1930s? Why was there an explosion of queer readings in that same decade? How did a canon get constructed which effectively determines which American films from past decades are still thought to be worth viewing?

But these are just a few of the many ways in which a study of this broader cinema culture can open out onto questions of general significance. Because it reminds us of this, Looking Past the Screen is a book worth having. It is of course aimed primarily at researchers into American film, but the principles outlined in the introduction and illustrated in the essays can equally well be applied to any other national cinema.

Colin Crisp,
Australia.

Created on: Thursday, 17 July 2008