Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling

Rather than focusing on the colorful stars and studio bosses of 1940s Hollywood, prolific film historian Bordwell (The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture) zooms in on the films themselves, and more specifically, how they were made. The popular storytelling techniques used by writers, directors, and producers throughout the decade—flashbacks, inner monologs, narration, and multiple story lines, for example—were not new, but rather were remixed and "creatively varied" to generate new narrative innovations. These techniques were featured in marquee titles such as Citizen Kane, How Green Was My Valley, and The Best Years of Our Lives, but also in lesser-known titles only die-hard cinephiles will be able to appreciate. Repetitive at times and often onerous in its encyclopedic scope, this book emphasizes how stories were told more than the stories themselves. But by isolating this particular aspect of the workshop-esque film industry of that time, Bordwell concludes that this "turbulent process of repetition and variation worked to the benefit of cinematic art."