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Book Reviews | Regular Feature Book Reviews Peter C. Rollins. Hollywood as Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context. Revised Edition 1998. The University Press ofKentucky. Revised Edition 1998. 288 pages; $18.00 paper. American Movies First published in 1983, Peter C. Rollins' motion picture study, Hollywood as Historian —an innovative, essay collection that, in one way or another, cited the film industry's role as media persuader—quickly became an established reference work in cinema criticism. Why wouldn't it? Containing twelve articles that examined the myriad roles American movies, with all their truths and distortions, have played depicting national history , this book took a hard look at the tricky world of screenplay perception, seeking answers to an ongoing question: does Hollywood influence society or is it the other way around? With such discrete topics as the controversy of D. W. Griffith's The Birth ofa Nation (1915), the pro-League of Nation propaganda stance in Darryl Zanuck's World War II entry, Wilson (1944), the underlying political tones of three New Deal tracts, The River (1937), The March of Time (1935-1951), and Native Land (1942), and the quiet irony in Stuart Heisler's wartime contribution, The Negro Soldier, this anthology offered many explanations to this timely problem. Another chapter discussed Chaplin's City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940) emphasizing the role of the tramp while other essays dissected the social criticism found in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Anatole Litvak's The Snake Pit and Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). Still other articles scrutinized the anticommunism paranoia of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), the censorship problems associated with Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and the moral perspective ofFrancis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). Lastly, another chapter traced William Fox's entrepreneurial career, the mogul, who— after many trials and errors—implemented a practical sound system , a technology that, overnight, ended the silent film industry. Now available in a revised edition, Hollywood as Historian includes an elaborate film, television and American studies bibliographical essay, a section that examines most of the current general and scholarly articles plus a thorough listing of academicjournals and associations. With information about finding film reviews, locating photoplay titles, using dictionaries and companions, plus selecting pertinent internet sources, this chapter , as Dr. Rollins suggests, provides the necessary information for anyone ready to launch a research project. All in all, Hollywood as Historian has provided scholars, media specialists, and students with important information these past seventeen years and this new edition will only continue to serve the academic community and generate further discussion. What, then, is the current debate regarding film and history? Can motion pictures change attitudes of social and political relevance ? Does Hollywood seek to imbrue their own interpretations or merely blend in with the mores ofthe times? How much pressure do governmental, corporate, or legal organizations exert on a film's content? These questions, and many others, are answered, argued, dissected, and even countermanded in Hollywood as Historian. Robert Fyne Kean University RJFyne@aol.com Robert K. Klepper. Silent Films, 1877-1996: A Critical Guide to 646 Movies. McFarland, 1999. Often Ignored Silent films ofthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are often ignored by the growing body of academic cinema studies, which tendto focus upon pictures after the advent of sound. A major factor in this dearth of scholarship is the inaccessibility ofearly cinema, much ofwhichhas been lost overthe years. Nevertheless , ignoring the origins of film as an art form and industry is somewhat like attempting to understand America without examining the Colonial period or studying Western Civilization devoid of the Fertile Crescent. Vol. 31.1 (2001) I 71 ...

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