Description: A comparison of the material histories of film studios in Britain, France, Germany and Italy during three transformative decades, 1930-60.
Brief description: Richard Farmer is Research Associate in the Department of Film and Television at the University of Bristol, UK. His publications include The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939-45 (2011) and Cinema and Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-45: The Utility Dream Palace (2016). He co-authored Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (2019) and has published many articles on aspects of British film and culture.
Review Quotes:
"This innovative and multi-prismatic volume offers an ambitious reordering of how we might understand European film history during the classical era. Instead of merely seeing the film studio as a series of static compartments facilitating the stable rectangle of the screen image, the authors animate a dynamic and transnational site of collaboration, social experience and political possibility. Just as the contours of the fictional film frame mobilise the conjunction of time and space for narrative ends, so this book too understands the scaled temporal-spatial potential of the film studio as a site of ongoing cultural meaning. Blending archival documentation, poly-vocal argumentation and conceptual acumen, this impressively researched work is going to reset the study of European cinema for a generation." --Alastair Phillips, Professor of Film Studies, University of Warwick, UK
"Written by a group of experts in British, French, German and Italian cinema this truly groundbreaking book marks a milestone for the historical study of studio filmmaking in Western Europe during one of its most turbulent but also most prolific periods. An admirable achievement." --Michael Wedel, Professor of Media History, Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany