John Dos Passos and Cinema

Description

The book features previously unpublished manuscripts and correspondence illustrating case studies of John Dos Passos' screen writing for Paramount Pictures (1934); his role in writing and filming The Spanish Earth (1937), a Spanish Civil War relief project whose circumstances culminated in his public break from the Left; the 1936 screen treatment he wrote just before The Spanish Earth in consultation with its director, Joris Ivens; and his later-career attempts, beginning in the 1940s, to adapt his radically innovative trilogy U.S.A. directly for the screen and to realign its leftist politics toward the anti-Communist conservatism reflected in his work and activism after the 1930s and the disillusionments of the Spanish Civil War. It thus provides a new context for and reading of his political reorientation in the 1930s that not only ended his long friendship with Ernest Hemingway but also evoked the opprobrium of his former champions on the Left and redefined his literary career. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I (1917–1928) From the Stage to the Screen: “Goin’ to the Movies … ” in the Great War and the 1920s 1. Experimental Drama and Soviet Constructivist Theater 2. The Birth of an Industry: Setting the Stage for the Screen 3. “Propaganda for peace”: Film and Narrative in One Man’s Initiation: 1917 (1920), Three Soldiers (1921), and D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World (1918) 4. Soviet Film: Montage, the Camera Eye, and Ideology Part II (1934–1937) From Paramount Studios to the Spanish Front: Writing Hollywood, Filming History 5. “The world’s greatest center of … propaganda”: Hollywood, The Devil Is a Woman, and The Big Money 6. Film Writing “Dreamfactory,” Metafilm, and the Politics of Form 7. Filming History and The Spanish Earth: “what a man and a comrade has to do in … wartimes” Part III (1937–1970) From Page to Stage to Screens: Adapting U.S.A. and “the truth as I see it” 8. Filmic Narrative Into Narrative Film: “politics and the silver screen” Conclusion Appendix Notes Index