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Two Ways of Looking at the Bisbee Deportation

A century-old image and the film it inspired.

How John Wayne Became a Hollow Masculine Icon

The actor’s persona was inextricable from the toxic culture of Cold War machismo.

Sexism and Male Voyeurism Have Been Intertwined Throughout Movie History

Harvey Weinstein and the history of the male cinematic gaze.

Who Was the Most Prolific Black Filmmaker of the Silent Film Era?

Who was the most prolific African American filmmaker of the silent film era? That’s a question that has us asking, “were there any?”
Orson Welles

A Hundred Years of Orson Welles

He was said to have gone into decline, but his story is one of endurance—even of unlikely triumph.
Painting of Ancient Rome, by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1757.
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All the World’s America’s Stage — Even Ancient Rome

Gladiator and Gladiator II have little to do with the Roman past. But they have a great deal to do with the American present.
Virginia Tracy.

Is Virginia Tracy the First Great American Film Critic?

The actress, screenwriter, and novelist’s reviews and essays from 1918-19 display a comprehensive grasp of movie art and a visionary sense of its future.
Screen shot from Carrie in which a bloody hand grabs a girl.

The Startling History of the Jump Scare

From 1942's "Cat People" to cerebral jolts in "Hereditary" and "Get Out," this cinematic scare tactic still shocks.
Characters in the 1934 film "The Thin Man."

Fools in Love

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.
From left, Sam Warner, Harry M. Warner, Jack L. Warner, and Albert Warner.

Are Hollywood’s Jewish Founders Worth Defending?

Jews in the industry called for the Academy Museum to highlight the men who created the movie business. A voice in my head went, Uh-oh.
Richard Dreyfuss plays shark expert Hooper in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1975 film, “Jaws.”

The Stories Hollywood Tells About America

How three movies set on the Fourth of July reproduce popular myth, but reveal even more through what they leave unsaid.
Four Black Marvel villains.

Marvel's Black Villain Era

The question of villainy has always been a complicated issue for African Americans in film.
Person in a red veil.

Connecting with Trans History, Rebellion, and Joy, in “Compton’s 22”

Transgender people's reactions to watching oral histories of the legacy of a 1966 riot in the Tenderloin that was nearly lost to history.
Still from Pretty Poison (1968).

The All-American Crack-Up in 1960s Hollywood Cinema

Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind.
Three men fight on a rooftop, above a large city on a river.

The Golden Age of the Paranoid Political Thriller

On the grand tradition of movies reflecting a deep distrust of those in charge.
Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
Silhouette of Oppenheimer wearing a fedora.

How Do We Know the Motorman Is Not Insane?

Oppenheimer and the demon heart of power.
Collage of American Indian film characters.

Native Americans on the Silver Screen, From Wild West Shows to 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

How American Indians in Hollywood have gone from stereotypes to starring roles.
A still from the 1960 film Spartacus of two Roman gladiators fighting.

How Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Broke the Hollywood Blacklists

The 1960 film was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood.
J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves

Beyond Tortured Genius: Science and Conscience in Two Rediscovered Oppenheimer Films

"The Day After Trinity" and "The Strangest Dream" evacuate the mythical tropes of the tortured genius biopic that Hollywood loves to rehearse.
Oppenheimer movie poster.

Fact, Fiction, and the Father of the Bomb

On Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
Still from the film 'Oppenheimer.'

‘It’s Really First-Class Work’

Watching 'Oppenheimer' with the author of a definitive account of the Manhattan Project.
Drawing from "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay
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The Cutting-Edge Cartoons of Winsor McCay

A prolific, meticulous artist, McCay created characters and storyscapes that inspired generations of cartoonists and animators.
Prominent writers Billy Wilder and Gore Vidal (right and second from right) join a writers’ picket line at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles, June 25, 1981. (Bettmann / Getty Images)

Hollywood Screenwriters Have Always Known That Moviemaking Is a Form of Labor

Stretching back to Hollywood’s Golden Age, writers and many others in the industry have fought for their rights as workers.
Four characters from "Dazed and Confused."

The “Dazed and Confused” Generation

People my age are described as baby boomers, but our experiences call for a different label altogether.
Robert De Niro as Gen. Dillenbeck, in "Amsterdam."

Did American Business Leaders Really Try to Overthrow the President, Like in "Amsterdam"?

How David O. Russell’s movie messes around with the story of the Business Plot.
When Tom Cruise starred in Top Gun in 1986, it wasn’t just a box office bonanza — it was a boon to the US military. Paramount Pictures

Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Love Story

For the Pentagon, films like "Top Gun: Maverick" are more than just a movie.
Sly Stone performing in front of crowd

What the Harlem Cultural Festival Represented

Questlove’s debut as a director, the documentary "Summer of Soul," revisits a musical event that encapsulated the energies of Harlem in the 1960s.
A chipping mural depicting Fred Hampton, subject of the film Judas and the Black Messiah.

History Lessons on Film: Reconsidering Judas and the Black Messiah

Historians should watch films like Judas and the Black Messiah as much for their filmmaking as their history making.

What's Going On? 50 Years Ago, The Answer Was Bigger Than Marvin Gaye

In 1971, a wave of Black artists released explosive new work that put its politics front and center.

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