The modern impulse gave us captivating technology and dark anxiety, rampant mobility and a world filled with strangers, the futuristic city and a fragmentation of experience. Motion pictures––the quintessence of modernism––entered into this cultural, technical, and philosophical richness with a vast public appeal and a jarring new vision of what life could be.

In Cinema and Modernity, Murray Pomerance brings together new essays by seventeen leading scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. Among the many films considered are Detour, Shock Corridor, The Last Laugh, Experiment in Terror, The Great Dictator, Leave Her to Heaven, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Eyes Wide Shut, Sunrise, The Crowd, The Shape of Things to Come, The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Scarlet Street, Shadow of a Doubt, Stella Dallas, The Blue Angel, Sullivan’s Travels, and Catch Me If You Can.

Contributions by: Patrice Petro, Murray Pomerance, Krin Gabbard, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Steven Alan Carr, Joe McElhaney, William Rothman, Tom Conley, David Sterritt, Tom Gunning, Walter Metz, Christopher Sharrrett, Lucy Fischer, Peter Lehman
Introduction by: Murray Pomerance