An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory

(Paperback)

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Description

Exploring cinemagoing and cinema culture, this book considers the 1930s, when "going to the pictures" was everybody's favourite spare-time activity. From the familiar and magical surroundings of the picture houses themselves to the action and romance on the screen, Annette Kuhn draws on extensive interviews with picturegoers, research in cultural history and readings of popular films of the day to discover how cinema brought a special magic to the daily lives of a generation of young men and women growing up in an austere climate of making-do. From Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald to Fred and Ginger, she shows how audiences looked to their screen heroines and heroes for inspiration, and explores the importance of cinemagoing in make-believe, play, friendship and growing up. The book throws light on issues such as cinema spectatorship, childhood, adolescence, ageing and film reception, and provides a contribution to understandings of both the role of cinema in its heyday and the nature of popular memory.

Reviews

Time Out London "An Everyday Magic is a lovely oral history of 1930s cinema-going, when you could get into the pictures with a jam-jar a documentary begging to be filmed." Sight & Sound: "Kuhn is so honourable in her approach one eagerly awaits the sequel!" Journal of British Cinema and Television: "important study of the cultures of cinema-going in 1930's Britain" "represents the first thoroughgoing attempt to apply the techniques of oral history to cinema-going." "provides a fundamental challenge to the way in which the history of film has so often been written." "This is the sort of research into cinema-going that I would like to see...an important addition" Journal of Contemporary History: "an important and groundbreaking book, the fruit of a decade-long ethnohistorical enquiry that attempts to revise our understanding of audiences and cinema-going."

Author Bio

Annette Kuhn is Emeritus Professor in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her books include Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, The Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (with Guy Westwell), and Little Madnesses: Winnicott, Transitional Phenomena and Cultural Experience.