A Short History of the Movies

The ninth edition of A Short History of the Movies continues the tradition-scrupulously accurate in its details, up-to-date, free of jargon-that has made it the most widely adopted textbook for college courses in film history, and now includes a fresh look at "Persistence of Vision" and a new chapter on digital cinema. This volume offers students a panoramic overview of the worldwide development of film, from the first movements captured on celluloid, to the early Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin shorts, through the studio heyday of the 1930s and 1940s and the "Hollywood Renaissance" of the 1960s and 1970s, to the pictures and their technology appearing in the multiplexes and living rooms of today. This new edition, which has been revised and rewritten to reflect current scholarship, recent industry developments, and new films and filmmakers, represents an accurate, scrupulous updating of a classic.