European Identities in Classic Hollywood and Los Angeles, 1924-1950

Exploration of myriad European identities within classic Hollywood studio system and within city of Los Angeles as site of cultural production. In-depth analyses and historicizing of impact of European émigrés and exiles on American cinema, especially development of film noir as key genre. Discussion of European identities including film artists from France (Maurice Chevalier, René Clair, Jean Renoir), Germany and Austria (Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder), Italy (Frank Capra), and Sweden (Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Warner Oland, Victor Sjöström). Includes compelling urban humanities component. Investigation of history of Los Angeles as growing urban metropolis that emerges as key locus of American and global mass media culture. Examination of how films and secondary scholarship further reveal how inextricably Europeans in Los Angeles—including artistic and intellectual exiles from Hitler’s Nazi-occupied Europe in 1930s and 1940s—shaped this key 20th-century art form.

P/NP or letter grading.