Cinema and Modernity

The modern impulse gave us captivating technology and dark anxiety, rampant mobility and a world filled with strangers, the futuristic city and a fragmentation of experience. Into this amalgamation of cultural, technical, and philosophical richness came motion pictures - the quintessence of modernism - with a vast public appeal and a jarring new vision of what life could be. In
Cinema and Modernity , Murray Pomerance brings together new essays by seventeen leading scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. Among the many films considered are
Detour ,
Shock Corridor ,
The Last Laugh ,
Experiment in Terror ,
The Great Dictator ,
Leave Her to Heaven ,
The Talented Mr. Ripley ,
Eyes Wide Shut ,
Sunrise ,
The Crowd ,
The Shape of Things to Come ,
The War of the Worlds ,
The Day the Earth Stood Still ,
Scarlet Street ,
Shadow of a Doubt ,
Stella Dallas ,
The Blue Angel ,
Sullivan’s Travels , and
Catch Me If You Can . Whether by displaying new gender and class identities, by describing relations between the individual and the state, or by illuminating the speed and freneticism that was rapidly becoming a part of everyday life, this volume shows us the significant ways that film has both grown in the context of the modern world and played a central role in reflecting and shaping our interactions with it.