Sociology on Film

Postwar Hollywood's Prestige Commodity

By Chris Cagle

Rutgers University Press

After World War II, Hollywood’s “social problem films”—tackling topical issues that included racism, crime, mental illness, and drug abuse—were hits with critics and general moviegoers alike. In an era of film famed for its reliance on pop psychology, these movies were a form of popular sociology, bringing the academic discipline’s concerns to a much broader audience.

Sociology on Film examines how the postwar “problem film” translated contemporary policy debates and intellectual discussions into cinematic form in order to become one of the preeminent genres of prestige drama. Chris Cagle chronicles how these movies were often politically fractious, the work of progressive directors and screenwriters who drew scrutiny from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Yet he also proposes that the genre helped to construct an abstract discourse of “society” that served to unify a middlebrow American audience.

As he considers the many forms of print media that served to inspire social problem films, including journalism, realist novels, and sociological texts, Cagle also explores their distinctive cinematic aesthetics. Through a close analysis of films like Gentleman’s Agreement, The Lost Weekend, and Intruder in the Dust, he presents a compelling case that the visual style of these films was intimately connected to their more expressly political and sociological aspirations. Sociology on Film demonstrates how the social problem picture both shaped and reflected the middle-class viewer’s national self-image, making a lasting impact on Hollywood’s aesthetic direction.

Sociology on Film delivers intriguing new insights on the operations of Hollywood in the postwar years and its complex, muted engagement with the problems of social and industrial modernity. Lee Grieveson, University College London

Brims with fresh insights and penetrating sociological analysis, smoothly moving from one film to the next, highlighting unexpected linkages along the way… Highly recommended. Choice

Cagle makes a powerful case for the importance of the social problem film as a prestige genre that conscientiously popularized developments in 20th-century sociology as it both formed and gratified Hollywood's aspirational 'middlebrow' audience. Jerome Christensen, author of America's Corporate Art: Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures

CHRIS CAGLE is an associate professor of film and media arts at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1Two Modes of Prestige Film

2Hollywood as Popular Sociology

3Hollywood and the Public Sphere

4A Genre Out of Cycles

5Realist Melodrama

Epilogue

Notes

Index

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