Open AccessAmerican cinema of the Great Depression. The «Social Restlessness Phase»
Author(s) -
Dmitriy Vladislavovich Zakharov,
Захаров Дмитрий Владиславович
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
vestnik vgik
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2713-2471
pISSN - 2074-0832
DOI - 10.17816/vgik5217-32
Subject(s) - movie theater , subject (documents) , great depression , depression (economics) , psychoanalysis , adversary , media studies , sociology , history , art , psychology , political science , art history , law , statistics , mathematics , macroeconomics , library science , computer science , economics
The article overviews the American cinema of the 1930 in terms of the “cyclic conception” stating that the life of American society is subject to a distinctive algorhithm of public mood: “social restlessness” alternating with “private interest”. The author surveys gangster film, one of the dominating genres of the Depression cinema as exemplified by “The Pubic Enemy (1931, dir. William A. Wellman). The article also traces the links of the “social restlessness” films of the 1930s with the previous and subsequent phases stressing the problem of dividing each phase into stages: formation, prime and decline.