"The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era", Thomas Schatz
Thomas Schatz is the director of undergraduate courses in the radio, TV and film University of Texas (Austin) and author of Hollywood genres. A member of the American Film Institute, he is also a regular contributor to the of American TV PBS and specialized magazines like Wide Angle , Cineaste and Premiere . The Genius of the System depicts the greatness of Classic Hollywood era, not through the talent of its directors (Hitchcock, Hawks, or Lang), but of the commercial vision and executive talent of the producers of the great studios (Selznick, Zanuck, Mayer, the Warner brothers and Irving Thalberg). By interweaving the histories of Warner Bros., MGM, Universal and Selznick International Pictures, by telling the production stories of such classics as Greed , Frankenstein , Rebecca or Grand Hotel , by looking at the cinema through a business perspective, Schatz diminishes the romanticism of directorial authorship created by critics and historians in the 60s and 70s, studying ...