James Combs

Essays here explore the relationship between politics and explicitly political feature films from the beginning of the movie industry to World War I, and for each decade through to the 1980's. The included filmography is particularly useful. Originally published in 1990, the method of inquiry put forward in this text is nonetheless extendable to the decades following its publication.

An Annotated Filmography of Feature Films

American Political Movies

This volume uses the metaphor of schooling to highlight the conviction that the widespread attention given to moving pictures in their various venues is not only diverting and entertaining, but also educative, although subtle and suggestive rather than explicit and didactic. The importance of our movie experience includes the inescapable fact of play-learning, which, for many people, becomes accumulative over time and consequential in our imagination of the world, as well as providing guidelines and cues for possible lines of action and codes of socially relevant beliefs. Most movies are not propaganda, but what is communicated onscreen can be incorporated into our ways of thinking and acting. Although this process is difficult to ascertain certainly, nevertheless, for those interested in the overwhelming impact of moving pictures as a component and source of our thinking and action, it deserves serious inquiry and invites social concern as to its power as an experience from which we learn who are and what we do.

Popular Learning at the Movies

Cinematic Schooling

Following on from the author’s previous books treating aspects of the cinematic experience, this text reflects on what he has learned about that major innovation in the cultural life of humankind, and suggests to readers and scholars what ideas and concepts they might find useful in their own future studies. As this book argues, the most illuminating perspective for studying the movies is ‘play’, the notion that moving pictures were a major ludenic innovation in the world’s cultural life and became a definite source of human knowledge and discourse. In that way, movies became an important medium of not only popular entertainment, but also popular enlightenment. The perspective and conceptual framework developed in this work will be suggestive to future inquirers interested in understanding the power and persistence of popular movies, helping them towards further insight into this major cultural phenomenon. By using moving pictures to amend the ancient art and craft of storytelling, the future of the medium may persist in the future, if in altered and new modes of popular presentation.

An Inquiry into the Cinematic Experience

Moving Pictures

Sara T. Combs

Originally published in 1994, this important book traces the rise of film propaganda in the 20th Century, discussing specifically how film can be used to manipulate public perception and opinions. Two distinct areas are covered: war propaganda, including feature and documentary films regarding warfare; and civilian propaganda, including films that address a variety of political subjects. Although the focus is American film and American politics, this book offers insights for all those interested in the affect of film on the minds of citizens of any country or state.

An Analysis and Filmography

Film Propaganda and American Politics

This book is a study of the “Great Movies,” that fluid category of feature films deemed by various authorities—film societies, critics, academics, and movie enthusiasts—to be the enduring and memorable works of cinematic history. But what are they about? In Wit’s End, the author attempts to “make sense” of these films in order to understand their greatness in the context of their relation to other films and to the worlds they come from and recreate on screen. To that end, we employ the conceptual power of pragmatic social theory and the rich idea of aesthesis to explore and arrange these films as a means of understanding what they express about the universality of human life in our keen use of wit, organization of social wont, and direction of cultural way. It is hoped that such an inquiry will illuminate the glory of the great films and contribute to the advance of film studies.

James Combs

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