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Despite the economic hardship of the thirties, people flocked to the movies in unprecedented numbers.At the same time, the Roosevelt Administration was trying to implement the New Deal and increase the influence and power of the federal government.

Despite the economic hardship of the thirties, people flocked to the movies in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, the Roosevelt Administration was trying to implement the New Deal and increase the influence and power of the federal government. Weaving together film and political history, Giuliana Muscio traces the connections between Depression Era Hollywood and the popularity of FDR, asserting that politics transformed its public into spectators while the movie industry transformed its spectators into a public.Hollywood's New Dealreveals the ways in which this reciprocal relationship between politics and film evolved into a strategic effort to stabilize a nation in the clutches of economic unrest by creating a unified American consciousness through national cinema. Muscio analyzes such regulatory practices as the Hays Code, and the government's scrutinizing of monopolistic practices such as block booking and major studio ownership of movie theaters.Hollywood's New Deal,focusing on the management and structure of the film industry, delves deep into the Paramount case, detailing the behind-the-scenes negotiations and the public statements that ended with film industry leaders agreeing to self regulate and to eliminate monopolistic practices. Hollywood's acquiescence and the government's retreat from antitrust action show that they had found a mutually beneficial way of preserving their own spheres of power and influence. This book is indispensable for understanding the growth of the film industry and the increasing political importance of mass media. In the seriesCulture and the Moving Image, edited by Robert Sklar.

Martin Scorsese's filmography includes seven musical documentaries: Woodstock , The Last Waltz , The Neighborhood of The Concert for New York ; The Blues: Feel Like Going Home ; No Direction Home: Bob Dylan ; Shine a Light ; and George Harrison: Living in the Material World . This chapter examines the use of songs in three films, Mean Streets , GoodFellas , and Casino , which helps us understand the role music, and specifically popular songs, play in his expressive world. Scorsese has a varied musical competence, but in his filmmaking practice, music seems to have been part of the editing process, at least in the beginnings. The topic of film music is too broad to be explored, but in the case of Scorsese's work, it is worth specific attention, given his technical knowledge about it, due to his early involvement with sound and music editing, and because of his stated position that it is never “decorative” in his movies.

TheParamountcase, the antitrust suit filed in 1938 by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department against eight film companies (Paramount, Loew-MGM, RKO, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century–Fox, Columbia, Universal, and United Artists) ended in 1948 with the Supreme Court decision that separated production and distribution from exhibition, when restraining trade.¹ Until now, scholars have concentrated on this conclusion and its implications, rather than on the development of the case as aprocess, a complex interplay of different factors, subject to different tensions. Studying theParamountcase as a process allows us to clarify how the Supreme Court decision