Tag: film history

  • Empty Socks: a Tale Full of Surprises

    Empty Socks:  a Tale Full of Surprises

    By Amy Schaffman Recently, an exciting discovery was made in the National Library of Norway. A rare, lost Disney film, Empty Socks (1927), was identified. Empty Socks is one of the few Disney films to employ Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a forerunner of Mickey Mouse. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was lost in deal with Universal…

  • A Little Chaos (2014): A commitment travesty

    A Little Chaos (2014): A commitment travesty

    By Anna Knutsson @annaknutsson Anna Knutsson is an MPhil student in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. She is currently researching expressions of female involvement in medicine in Renaissance Florence. Director: Alan Rickman Cast: Kate Winslet, Stanley Tucci, Alan Rickman, Jennifer Ehle, Matthias Schoenaerts, Helen McCrory. Lack of commitment is a constant complaint of…

  • Ghettoes to Gentrification: How Hollywood Shaped America’s Urban Imagination

    Ghettoes to Gentrification: How Hollywood Shaped America’s Urban Imagination

    By Sam Collings-Wells (@Sam_cw_) ‘And they hide their faces / And they hide their eyes / Cause the city is dyin’/ And they don’t know why’. These lyrics from Randy Newman’s 1977 ‘Baltimore’—later made famous by Nina Simone’s justly celebrated cover—perfectly captured the spirit urban life during the mid-1970s. Historians would later pinpoint the variety…

  • 7. Romanian New Wave Cinema and Self-Conscious Commemoration

    7. Romanian New Wave Cinema and Self-Conscious Commemoration

    By Beatrice Leeming, @LeemingBeatrice Arthouse cinema is often associated with French films of the 1950s and ‘60s. At a push, critical interest extends to experimental Czech cinema of the same period. In the Anglo-American world, insufficient attention and appreciation is afforded to the Romanian New Wave (RNW), a concentration of creative and critically acclaimed cinema…

  • 21. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and the Red Scare

    21. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and the Red Scare

    by Lauren Walker Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life, is an established Christmas favourite. However, upon release, it received mixed reviews and came $525,000 short of breaking even at the box office. It was only after entering public domain in 1974 that it became the immensely popular and acclaimed classic it is today.…