Class

"Class" is a term used to categorize people according to their economic status. It frequently involves a consideration of income level, type of profession, inherited wealth and family lineage, and a diffusely understood idea of "social standing." Historically, most societies have made distinctions among their members according to some kind of class division—although capitalist cultures promote the idea of being "classless" societies (as in the concept of the "American Dream" that individuals can rise in station based on their ability alone). Motion pictures have been intricately involved in issues of class and modern capitalism, emerging as both a technology and as a form of entertainment at the height of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, and subsequently becoming one of the most powerful market-driven businesses of the twentieth century. Representations of class division on screen have been joined with the history of labor negotiations in the industry, and even attitudes toward the class identities of filmgoers over time. While the dominant Hollywood film industry has largely attempted (whether consciously or not) to soft-pedal its messages about class, various historical eras and film movements across the globe have attempted not only to raise class consciousness but also to encourage social change.

Often discussion of class is caught up within a film's discussion of more manifest social concerns. For example, issues of class disparity tend to be threaded through examinations of gender and sexuality. Hollywood screwball comedies like It Happened One Night (1934) and Easy Living (1937) often frame antagonism between the classes as a rocky (but ultimately resolvable) heterosexual romance between a person of wealth and an average worker. Gion no shimai (Sisters of the Gion, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936) details the economic power relations of the geisha system in 1930s Japan, but is often regarded as a film about gender oppression. Similarly, depictions of the working class or the poor are also often depictions of a country's ethnic or racial minorities—thus (whether intentionally or not) obscuring the discussion of the economic system with a discussion of racial discrimination (or conversely, an assertion that such people are inferior and thus deserving of—and perhaps even content—being poor).

Such obfuscations seem to reinforce Marxist ideas of base and superstructure—that the economic imperative forms the base of both a society and its ideology, with various other systems (such as concepts of gender and of race/ethnicity) built like a superstructure upon that base. The development of cinema as a capitalist enterprise has tended to lead to the production of films that repeatedly construct superstructural representations that uphold and celebrate capitalism, and any potential downsides to capitalism must be reworked and redirected.

WORKING-CLASS ENTERTAINMENT

Many of the early motion picture pioneers were influenced by the great strides of invention occurring during the Industrial Revolution. While such inventions were touted as bringing easier and more comfortable lives to humankind, profit potential also helped drive many of these developments. New machines helped streamline production, churning out more items in less time for less cost (unless one counts the loss of hearing, limbs, and/or lives in factories that had no safety codes). Inventors with patents could corner the market on their invention and make a fortune. Certainly, such potential economic gain drew Thomas Edison (1847–1931) to research motion pictures and then ruthlessly try to control all the major patents of the technology.

The presumed audience for motion pictures became a matter of contention in the early decades. Edison's Kinetoscope parlors were often situated near boardwalks or amusement parks, low-cost entertainment for the new industrial urban working class. These early films seem geared toward what was thought to be popular with the working class: cockfights, boxing matches, female "cooch" dancers. On the other side of the Atlantic, though, the Lumière Brothers (Auguste [1862–1954] and Louis [1864–1948]) seemed to hypothesize a middle-class audience by making short films depicting the life of the French bourgeoisie: respectable men and women in their homes or their gardens or in town. Similarly, the British gentlemen that became known as "the Brighton school" also centered their films on middle-class lives—even to the extent of imaging the poor as vagrants intent on stealing babies from bourgeois families, as in Rescued by Rover (1905).

Cinema in the United States, though, became associated with immigrants and the working class. A number of early short narratives even sided with the poor, with films such as The Kleptomaniac (1905) and A Corner in Wheat (1909) comparing the suffering of the working class to the mendacity and privilege of the wealthy. Increasingly, middle-class reformers attempted to shut down nickelodeons as dens of iniquity filled with lowlifes and illegal activity. As a consequence, the 1910s saw the industry concertedly wooing middle-class customers, especially since they had more potential spending money. Penny-ante nickelodeons gave rise to motion picture palaces that spoke of luxury and refinement. Filmmakers aimed at legitimacy by adapting great novels or plays, spending more money on costumes and sets, and hiring major theatrical stars. The rise of narrative filmmaking during this time also tended to favor plots that reinforced middle-class morality. In particular, popular American cinema began invoking the Horatio Alger narrative of "rags to riches," supporting the idea that democracy meant a free-market economy that would reward anyone with enough energy and determination. The success of such silent comedians as Buster Keaton (1895–1966), Harold Lloyd (1893–1971), and Harry Langdon (1884–1944) were predicated on little guys succeeding against all odds. Cinderella stories of shopgirls finding love and marriage with a millionaire also became popular. The Horatio Alger narrative works to obscure the existence of class division by suggesting the ease in which someone of meager means can rise in society (even if statistics may indicate otherwise in the actual world).

The success of Hollywood cinema, both in the United States and then around the world, guaranteed that its Horatio Alger formula would be widely imitated. Yet films in other countries subtly worked to reinforce a more established class system during the first half of the century. British cinema, for example, often reinforced the barriers between the working class and the gentry by associating national identity with upper-class culture: fox hunting, the manor-born, and gentility. Working-class people were often depicted as slightly foolish, yet happy with their lot in life serving their betters. (Perhaps the greater awareness of class disparity in British culture made the US films of British-born Charles Chaplin [1889–1977] in his Tramp persona a rare exception to the Horatio Alger plots that dominated Hollywood cinema.) Similarly, early Indian cinema consistently reinforced the lines between classes, offering cautionary melodramas of individuals who dared to consider stepping outside their proscribed positions. Since the under-classes still made up the majority of the filmgoing public in these countries, such narratives worked to keep them reconciled to their place in the social structure.

Mainstream film narratives in many countries also emphasized glamour and wealth, reveling in high production values as men and women wearing high fashion lived in glorious mansions or penthouses. Such films, whether consciously or not, made the lives of the well-to-do seem more important and more desirable—and, by omission, made the lives of the poor or working class seem unimportant and inferior.

The efforts by the industry to move into middle-class respectability was also mirrored in the shift from a penny-ante concern to a thriving big business with a factory-like system. Most obviously in Hollywood, but also in countries such as Great Britain, China, India, and Japan, studios were established that placed workers on a hierarchy as a film went through a virtual conveyor belt of production. Studio executives worked strenuously to maintain total control over their workforce, and used every means at their disposal to keep workers from unionizing. At the same time, though, Hollywood public relations promoted the American film industry as itself an example of the Horatio Alger myth—a tale of immigrants rising to become the heads of major studios, or little nobodies being discovered for stardom on the silver screen.

CHALLENGES TO THE CLASS STRUCTURE

While various national cinemas strove to shed their reputation as "working-class" entertainment, Soviet cinema of the 1920s strove to strengthen and deepen the connection between cinema and the workers. The Soviet leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin himself considered cinema to be the most important art form—specifically because of its ability to attract and speak to the proletariat. As a consequence, Soviet cinema focused directly on drawing audiences out of "false consciousness" in order to make them class conscious, and to energize the socialist revolution. Filmmaker Dziga Vertov's (1896–1954) concept of the kino-eye theorized how the technology and aesthetics of cinema could expand human perception and consciousness. Director Sergei Eisenstein's (1898–1948) ideas of dialectical montage were also founded on attempting to broaden the mind's comprehension of the social order instead of simply acquiescing to the ideological precepts of either monarchy's "divine right" or the demands of capitalism. Unlike the typical Horatio Alger story that focused on individual heroes, Soviet films tended to focus on group protagonists—the crew of the Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin, 1925), or the villagers in Zemlya (Earth, 1930). Unfortunately, by the 1930s, the regime of Josef Stalin (1924–1953) mandated a shift from a cinema that consistently challenged audiences to think for themselves to a cinema of "Socialist Realism" that championed the working class but attempted to keep workers docile and obedient.

Although Soviet silent cinema was the most obvious counter-argument to Hollywood's celebration of capitalist materialism, a number of German kammerspiel films in the 1920s, such as Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924) and Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street, 1925), acknowledged the disparity between the haves and the have-nots in a country dealing with rampant inflation and poverty after World War I. The rest of Europe and the United States was hit with economic hard times when the Depression began as the decade came to a close. The sudden collapse of stocks, credit, and jobs shook many people's faith in capitalism. Although the Hollywood studios usually support the status quo that helps keep them empowered, Hollywood films of the early 1930s were at times shockingly critical of capitalism. Exposés like Wild Boys of the Road (1933) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) depicted the failure of the American Dream, usually showing the system of law and government working for big business and against the common citizen. The rise of gangster films glorifying life outside the law also had audiences empathizing with rebellion against the establishment.

Such criticisms in Hollywood films waned by the mid-1930s and the start of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal (1933). A limited expansion of socialist ideas (social security, farm subsidies, work programs) created a new sense of optimism in the United States, and Hollywood films capitulated by reviving the Horatio Alger narrative. Most prominently, the films of director Frank Capra (1897–1991)—notably Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)—have become iconic in their upholding of the American Dream. Even the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's (1902–1968) The Grapes of Wrath (1940) shifted from a depiction of the failure of American capitalism to a story that glorified the determination of the American family. Late 1930s Hollywood films were a return to escapist fantasy—literally, in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and The Wizard of Oz (1939)—helping audiences forget their woes. A similar pattern emerged in Europe. Alexander Korda (1893–1956) produced high-class costume epics in Britain. A "cinema of distraction," with sophisticated ladies and their white telephones, became prominent in Italian, German, and French cinema. One of the few trends in 1930s European cinema that regularly depicted the underclass was French Poetic Realism, although many of these films tended to tell stories with an air of romanticized fatalism rather than incisive analysis.

Documentaries in the latter half of the Depression also worked to support the opinion that the established system could solve economic hardship without needing a revolution. US documentaries such as The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) acknowledge the crisis, but end with a rousing tribute to American know-how. The British documentaries of John Grierson's (1898–1972) GPO Film Unit also tended to support the strength and success of the Empire and its industries in films like Song of Ceylon (1934), Housing Problems (1935), and Night Mail (1936). In their own way, Nazi German news-reels and documentaries, such as Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), also asserted that national strength would overcome economic suffering, even as they also blamed such hardship on Jews and communists.

To a certain extent, the outbreak of war throughout Europe and Asia diminished the discussion of class issues, as diverse strata came together to fight the enemy. Films about the war in a number of countries often showed characters from various backgrounds working side by side in shared cause. Maiagaru Jonetsu (Soaring Passion, Japan, 1941), In Which We Serve (UK, 1942), and Bataan (US, 1943) are representative of this trend. After the war, though, awareness of economic disparity grew in many countries. Italian filmmakers in particular began documenting the hardships in recovering from the war through a series of fictional films shot in an almost-documentary style that was soon referred to as neorealism. Throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s, Italian neorealist films like Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) and Umberto D (1952) covered the struggles of the disenfranchised. By emphasizing long takes, long shots, and depth of focus, everything on-screen in a neorealist film seemed equally important, instead of Hollywood's use of close-ups and shallow focus to force attention on the glamorous lead actors. The international acclaim that these films received led to strains of neo-realism in other countries, such as West Germany (Die Mörder sind unter uns [Murderers Among Us, 1946],) Mexico (Los Olvidados [The Young and the Damned, 1950]), and Spain (Muerte de un ciclista [Death of a Cyclist, 1955]). In the United States, social problem films such as Force of Evil (1948) or film noir such as Double Indemnity (1944) also critiqued the greed and desperation of individuals trapped by their social standing. By the end of the 1950s, British film (as well as theater and literature) moved away from stories of the posh upper-crust to tales of the working class. The "kitchen sink realism" of films like Look Back in Anger (1958) and

MIKE LEIGH
b. Salford, England, 20 February 1943

Mike Leigh's films consistently focus on the British class system, particularly the working class. Often, issues of class are intertwined with concepts of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity as well. Many critics link his work back to the "kitchen-sink realism" of British cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Others, though, point out how Leigh emphasizes the performativity of life (possibly due to his background in theater), often by exposing the Secrets & Lies (1996) that people hide behind their public facades. In this way, concepts of class identity (as well as other forms of identity) are exposed as social constructions. Most particularly, this is expressed through the characterization of individuals who have forsaken their working-class backgrounds—as in High Hopes (1988), Secrets & Lies, and Career Girls (1997).

After his first theatrical film, Bleak Moments (1971), Leigh worked almost exclusively in television for the next fifteen years. Films such as High Hopes and Life Is Sweet (1990) reintroduced him to film audiences. His films match his TV work in following the everyday events and actions of ordinary or marginalized people. The sense of realism is often accomplished through a lack of fancy camerawork or editing, and through sudden swings from comedy to trauma and back again. Also, protagonists are not always likable—particularly in Naked (1993), about a truly Angry Young Man railing at all of society—and often are shown displaying contradictory reactions.

Rather than pontificating on the ideological implications of the average worker's plight, Leigh's films dramatize the efficacy of socialism through stories of communities learning to support each other (or of the tragedy of individuals cast adrift). Leigh's working method also emphasizes group effort; he develops scripts with his cast in an improvisational atmosphere before setting the dialogue down in stone (a technique that also helps the sense of realism). As microcosms of working-class communities, families figure strongly in Leigh's films, as in Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004). Familial relationships create much of the friction within these narratives as gender roles, generational viewpoints, and economic aspirations collide. Yet the families are shown working to overcome those disputes—and they often come together to withstand oppression from outside forces. Even Leigh's high-gloss biography of musical theater songwriters Gilbert and Sullivan, Topsy-Turvy (1999), pictures the duo as a professional family that alternately squabbled with and cared for each other. Leigh's use of family dynamics makes it easy for most viewers to sympathize with the characters, even when they display unlikable qualities. Combining such dynamics with moments of laughter and tears, Leigh's films use emotion rather than rhetoric to portray the lives of the working class.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004)

FURTHER READING

Carney, Ray. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Jones, Edward Trostle. All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.

Movshovitz, Howie, ed. Mike Leigh: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

Sean Griffin

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) depicted the hardships and frustrations of working class youth.

DISCUSSING CLASS DURING THE COLD WAR

The post–World War II period also saw discussion of class reframed by the simmering tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union espoused socialist rhetoric criticizing the class divisions of Western capitalism, life in the USSR and its sphere of influence was itself often severely stratified between the haves and the have-nots. Anyone who dared to acknowledge such economic disparity was in danger of investigation, imprisonment, torture, and/or death. Such threats did not stop some filmmakers in eastern European countries, such as Jiri Menzel (b. 1938) in Czechoslovakia and Andrzej Wajda (b. 1926) in Poland, from presenting Soviet-dominated society as one that suppressed individual liberty more than it eradicated power hierarchies. These efforts usually led to crackdowns. Soviet-style communism was not alone in such censorship. In the late 1960s, China's Cultural Revolution effectively shut down the film industry entirely because it was considered too Western-influenced, and many filmmakers were imprisoned or went missing.

It is important to recognize, though, that in the United States attempts to discuss capitalism critically were often met with similar suspicions of treason. Many filmmakers who had made social problem films about economic injustice found themselves investigated by the federal government as communist spies or sympathizers. Throughout the 1950s, an era of paranoia reigned within the film industry as studio executives agreed to blacklist any worker suspected of having communist ties. While potentially imperiling Hollywood as a whole, the Red Scare affected the power of the industry's labor unions most of all, weakening the ability for collective bargaining that had been hard-won during the Depression.

Social problem films in Hollywood ebbed in favor of mega-budget spectaculars that promoted happiness and fulfillment through consumerism. Bigger was better in Hollywood in the 1950s—bigger sets, bigger crowds of extras, even bigger screens with the advent of CinemaScope. Such a drift to escapist celebrations of conspicuous materialism occurred throughout most of Europe by the end of the 1950s. With US support behind the scenes, the Socialist Party in Italy was voted out of power, and an "Economic Miracle" began. The new government was outspoken in its criticism of how neorealism portrayed Italian society, and by the end of the decade neorealism had been replaced by high-gloss sex comedies and big-budget peplum (sword and sandal) films. The United Kingdom also saw the rise of an affluent society during the 1960s, and the image of the "angry young man" was succeeded by the icon of James Bond, who reveled in high-tech gadgets, casinos, and "shaken, not stirred" martinis.

Yet, even as much of "First World" cinema seemed to manifestly promote what capitalism had to offer, some films also suggested problems that lay beneath such effusiveness. Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s sometimes hinted at a simmering dissatisfaction—a feeling that money and material goods were not bringing happiness. Italian directors such as Federico Fellini (1920–1993) (La Dolce Vita [1960]) and Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912) (L'Avventura [1960]) portrayed the Economic Miracle as having created a shallow, soulless society. The films of the French New Wave also seemed to rebel against what was portrayed as the stifling values of bourgeois society.

Such attitudes toward First World capitalism became even more attenuated in the various national cinemas that emerged in newly postcolonial Third World countries. As many in these officially independent countries realized their continued psychological, cultural, and economic dependency on the West, they began to call for strategies of resistance. Throughout the 1960s, various film movements matched the growing radical political ideas of the Third World. Brazil's Cinema Novo described itself as an "aesthetics of hunger," for example, attempting to provide a voice for the peasant underclass against growing modernization and Western imperialism. Calls for an "imperfect cinema" in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, or for a type of guerrilla cinema termed "Third Cinema" by the Argentine filmmakers Fernando E. Solanas (b. 1936) and Octavio Getino (b. 1935), similarly attempted to divest themselves from dependence on Hollywood imperialist techniques. Many revolutionary filmmakers also sought to develop alternative or underground systems of production, distribution, and exhibition that were not motivated by the potential for profit.

Radical cinema began to make its presence felt in the United States and western Europe by the late 1960s, as countercultural factions began to swell within the population. Occurrences across the globe in 1968—the events of May in Paris and the riots during the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, as well as uprisings in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan—showed a widespread resistance to the establishment. Many individuals "dropped out" of the economy, creating communes and protesting government policies and business practices. A number of underground and leftist film-makers began producing experimental films and documentaries that challenged and critiqued what often was referred to at the time as the West's "military-industrial complex." Collectives such as Newsreel in the United States and the Dziga Vertov Group in France sought not only to provide alternative content but also alternative stylistics, production methods, and exhibition practices. Much like Soviet cinema of the 1920s or revolutionary Third World cinema of the 1960s, such films used alienation devices to snap viewers out of "false consciousness" and to make them aware and critical of both class division and its attendant ideologies (such as racism, sexism, and militarism). Going to an underground screening itself could feel like a radical act of resistance.

With younger audiences opting for underground or foreign films and older audiences often staying home to watch television, the Hollywood studios suffered major economic setbacks by the end of the 1960s. Desperate to find an audience, the studios began to address the concerns of the counterculture. Films like Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), and Mean Streets (1973) attempted to show the emptiness of the American Dream and the drama of the working class. Studios also began distributing low-budget blaxploitation films that exposed the trials and tribulations that faced America's inner-city African American population (albeit with extensive violence and sex included). Such attempts were not exclusive to US cinema, however. Japanese New Wave directors of the 1960s often voiced the aggravations of a younger generation in the midst of rapid modernization and Westernization. Nihon No Yoru To Kiri (Night and Fog in Japan, Nagisa Oshima, 1960) and Buta To Gunkan (Pigs and Battleships, Shohei Imamura, 1961) are examples of such Japanese New Wave films. New German Cinema (such as Angst essen Seele auf [Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1974], Stroszek [1977] and Die Ehe der Maria Braun [The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979]) often critiqued the effects of modern capitalism on West Germany. The German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) in particular commonly invoked Hollywood melodramas and "white telephone films" but in an overly stylized manner in order to lay bare their issues of class (as well as race, gender, and sexuality issues).

CINEMA IN THE AGE OF LATE CAPITALISM

While the politically engaged cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s attempted to address social issues such as economic oppression, it turned out that most of those who could be defined as "oppressed" preferred to watch escapist films that helped them forget their hardships. By the mid-1970s, the Hollywood film industry had resurrected itself with a number of blockbuster films that revived old formulas and genres. Audiences flocked to pictures such as The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975), and Star Wars (1977) not for their political critiques (which some analysts have pointed out) but for their ability to provide simple entertainment. Among the formulas dusted off and repackaged was the Horatio Alger narrative. In Rocky (1976) and Saturday Night Fever (1977), working-class men make better lives for themselves through sheer determination and hard work, with little-to-no discussion of the institutionalized forces that, in the real world, work to inhibit such mobility. Such optimistic messages would continue in popular American film for the rest of the century, from teen comedies such as Risky Business (1983) or Pretty in Pink (1986) to biopics such as Erin Brockovich (2000) or Ray (2004).

Certain trends in European cinema also began celebrating old-fashioned ideas of glamorous wealth and happy workers. Most particularly, the rise of British "heritage films" exuded nostalgia for the era before World War I, reveling in well-groomed manor grounds, lavishly appointed drawing rooms, and tuxedos and satin ball gowns. A number of similarly glossy films from other countries, such as Nuovo cinema Paradiso (Cinema Paradiso, Italy, 1989), Mediterraneo (Italy, 1991), Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate, Mexico, 1992), and Belle Epoque (Spain, 1993) portrayed peasant life in a golden hue of romanticism. Such films often seemed like cinematic postcards, packaging the country (and its quaint working-class customs) for tourists to purchase.

By the start of the twenty-first century, the communist government of the Soviet Union had collapsed, and China had begun integrating itself into the international economy. A new era of triumphant capitalism (dubbed "late capitalism" by philosopher Herbert Marcuse [1898–1979]) seemed to have dawned. Much of contemporary cinema (and mass media generally) reflects the increased commodification of life. From Hollywood summer blockbusters to Japanese anime, modern cinema functions simultaneously as a product and as an advertisement for related products—the video, the soundtrack CD, the computer game, the collectible figures, the theme park ride. Hollywood studios (and many media companies worldwide) were subsumed into larger international corporate identities toward the end of the twentieth century. Thus, many films were meant to keep the profits flowing from all the various arms of a conglomerate rather than to expose how the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer.

Yet some filmmakers wished to expose the class struggles that remained. Often focusing on groups rather than Horatio Alger protagonists, directors like Mike Leigh (b. 1943) (Life Is Sweet, 1990) in Britain, Denys Arcand (b. 1941) (Les Invasions Barbares [The Barbarian Invasions], 2003) in Canada, John Sayles (b. 1950) (Matewan, 1987) in the United States, and Hou Hsaio-Hsien (b. 1947) (Beiqing Chengshi [City of Sadness], 1990) in Taiwan depicted the complex nature of economics and class, and how they interrelate with issues such as gender and sexuality, national identity, history, and religious belief. While their work was often overlooked by audiences, such efforts kept the spirit of such early cinema as The Kleptomaniac alive as the new millennium began.

SEE ALSO Ideology;Marxism;Neorealism;Populism;Propaganda

FURTHER READING

Bergman, Andrew. We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films. New York: New York University Press, 1971.

Ceplair, Larry, and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980.

Compaine, Benjamin M., and Douglas Gomery. Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in Mass Media Industry. 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000. Originally published in 1982.

Downing, John D. H., ed. Film and Politics in the Third World. New York: Praeger, 1987.

Harvey, Sylvia. May '68 and Film Culture. London: British Film Institute, 1978.

Hill, John. Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema, 1956–1963. London: British Film Institute, 1986.

Overbey, David, ed. Springtime in Italy: A Reader on Neo-Realism. London: Talisman, 1978.

Ross, Steven J. Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Ryan, Michael, and Douglas Kellner. Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Youngblood, Denise J. Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985.

Sean Griffin