Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Offers a comprehensive survey of film - from the backlots of Hollywood, across the United States, and around the world. As in the authors' Film Art, the concepts and events in this title are illustrated with frame enlargements, aiming to give students realistic points of reference.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 Early Cinema
• 1 The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema
• 2 The International Expansion of the Cinema
• 3 National Cinemas, Hollywood Classicism, and World War I
• Part 2 The Late Silent Era, 1919-1929
• 4 France in the 1920's
• 5 Germany in the 1920's
• 6 Soviet Cinema in the 1920's
• 7 The Late Silent Era in Hollywood
• 8 International Trends of the 1920's
• Part 3 The Development of Sound Cinema, 1926-1945
• 9 The Introduction of Sound
• 10 The Hollywood Studio System
• 11 Other Studio Systems
• 12 Cinema and the State: The USSR, Germany and Italy
• 13 France: Poetic Realism, the Popular Front, and the Occupation
• 14 Leftist Documentary and Experimental Cinemas
• Part 4 The Postwar Era, 1946-1960's
• 15 American Cinema in the Postwar Era
• 16 Postwar European Cinema: Neorealism and Other Trends
• 17 Postwar European Cinema: France, Scandinavia, and Britain
• 18 Postwar Cinema Beyond the West
• 19 Art Cinema and the Idea of Authorship
• 20 New Waves and Young Cinemas
• 21 Documentary and Experimental Cinema in the Postwar Era
• Part 5 The Contemporary Cinema, 1960's to the Present
• 22 Third World Cinema: Mass Production and Revolutionary Politics
• 23 Critical Political Cinema of the 1960's and 1970's
• 24 Documentary and Experimental Film
• 25 Hollywood's Fall and Rise: Since the 1960's
• 26 New Cinemas and New Developments: Europe, The USSR, and the Pacific Since the 1970s
• 27 New Cinemas in Developing Countries Since the 1970's
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Glossary