Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling

by David Bordwell

In the 1940s, American movies changed. Flashbacks began to be used in outrageous, unpredictable ways. Soundtracks flaunted voice-over commentary, and characters might pivot from a scene to address the viewer. Incidents were replayed from different characters’ viewpoints, and sometimes those versions proved to be false. Films now plunged viewers into characters’ memories, dreams, and hallucinations. Some films didn’t have protagonists, while others centered on anti-heroes or psychopaths. Women might be on the verge of madness, and neurotic heroes lurched into violent confrontations. Combining many of these ingredients, a new genre emerged—the psychological thriller, populated by women in peril and innocent bystanders targeted for death.
           
If this sounds like today’s cinema, that’s because it is. In Reinventing Hollywood, David Bordwell examines for the first time the full range and depth of trends that crystallized into traditions. He shows how the Christopher Nolans and Quentin Tarantinos of today owe an immense debt to the dynamic, occasionally delirious narrative experiments of the Forties. With verve and wit, Bordwell examines how a booming movie market during World War II allowed ambitious writers and directors to push narrative boundaries. Although those experiments are usually credited to the influence of Citizen Kane, Bordwell shows that similar impulses had begun in the late 1930s in radio, fiction, and theatre before migrating to film. And despite the postwar recession in the industry, the momentum for innovation continued. Some of the boldest films of the era came in the late forties and early fifties, as filmmakers sought to outdo their peers.
           
Through in-depth analyses of films both famous and virtually unknown, from Our Town and All About Eve to Swell Guy and The Guilt of Janet Ames, Bordwell assesses the era’s unique achievements and its legacy for future filmmakers. The result is a groundbreaking study of how Hollywood storytelling became a more complex art. Reinventing Hollywood is essential reading for all lovers of popular cinema.
 

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In

592 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2017

About the author

David Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Professor at the University of Wisconsin, is arguably the most influential scholar of film in the United States. The author, with his wife Kristin Thompson, of the standard textbook Film Art and a series of influential studies of directors (Eisenstein, Ozu, Dreyer) as well as periods and styles (Hong Kong cinema, Classical Hollywood cinema, among others), he has also trained a generation of professors of cinema studies, extending his influence throughout the world. His books have been translated into fifteen languages.

Reviews

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a lengthy review of this book but Goodreads got stuck and ate it. So, all I'll say is, movie buffs and fans of Turner Classic Movies will love this book for its wide-ranging examples of movies that used various narrative strategies that were relatively new in the 40s (convoluted flashbacks, dream sequences, plots informed by psychological theory) but are still used by Hollywood today. He loses track of his thesis but remains an interesting observer of movies throughout.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you pick up David Bordwell’s Reinventing Hollywood, prepare yourself for a deep, deep dive overflowing with movie references both familiar and possibly unfamiliar, but rest assured: Bordwell is more than able to navigate you through the various depths you’ll encounter along the way. The book’s subtitle implies that we’re going to touch on cinematic storytelling before and after the 1940s, and we do, but the bulk of the work centers on films from 1939 to 1952. Whether you’ve seen most of the films mentioned or just a handful, you’re going to be bombarded with titles from Bordwell’s encyclopedic knowledge, so keep a list (or your Letterboxd app) handy.

Bordwell presents his central idea early on: that in movies from the 1940s, the “turbulent process of repetition and variation worked to the benefit of cinematic art.” (p. 2) Those narrative and structural variations that resulted from this decade continue to influence modern filmmakers such as David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino, and others. What was it about these variations that worked and why? And why the 1940s and not the ‘30s or ‘50s? The key is not the stories themselves, but the way the stories were told.

Read the rest of this review.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of film criticism that deals with aesthetics/form and the practical things that inspire (and limit) filmmakers. Hollywood was a very different town back then, and Bordwell expertly traces the how and why. Also—all the movies he writes about in-depth here are excellent!

[Jay Amari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author casts a wide vision in his comprehensive overview of a period in 1940s Hollywood filmmaking. It is a seminal coverage of his topic, and honestly one needs to review all the films he refers to in his text.
There are a plethora of impressive and intelligent movies. However to enjoy this book completely, the reader will have to immerse himself in the collection of movies from his study.
That's the real drawback to the book. Unless you've seen these films much of the author's references will leave you cold.
But what a read this is!

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I knew a lot about movies, but David Bordwell made me feel like an idiot in this wildly entertaining, encyclopedic tour of Hollywood movies from 1939 to 1952. Although I got a lot out of Bordwell's intelligent and incisive analysis of Hollywood narrative techniques and innovations in the 1940s—particularly his chapters on amnesia, flashbacks, plotting, quasi-documentary realism, fantasy, and mysteries and thrillers—the book would have been far more satisfying if I had prepared for it by watching the following movies:

- Kitty Foyle (1940)
- Our Town (1940)
- How Green Was My Valley (1941)
- In Which We Serve (1942)
- Mrs. Miniver (1942)
- Tales of Manhattan (1942)
- Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
- Curse of the Cat People (1944)
- Passage to Marseille (1944)
- Portrait of Jennie (1948)
- The Set-Up (1949)
- A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
- Daisy Kenyon (1947)
- Dark Passage (1947)
- Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
- The Bishop's Wife (1947)
- Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
- and anything by Preston Sturges

My bad. After I've watched some of those movies, I'll return to Bordwell's book for a better appreciation of his opinions on narrative film style. Regardless, Bordwell is still one of our best writers on the movies, and his enthusiasm is contagious.

BTW, immediately after reading the book, I looked for Sudden Fear, a 1952 suspense thriller starring Joan Crawford. A photo from the movie is featured on the cover of Bordwell's book. What a fantastic movie, set in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco! Crawford and Jack Palance, who plays the antagonist, are both wonderful; indeed, Crawford received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. I enjoyed the movie a lot more than Hitchcock's Vertigo, which was also set in San Francisco and came out six years later.

[Iulia Necșulescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my God this book is so fucking detailed and so easy to comprehend at the same time. It's a must read for anyone interested in classic films, film structures, narrative techniques or simply storytelling. The 40's were such a great decade for cinema and influenced and continue to influence the films of today. We must protect David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson at all costs!