Cinematic Flashes challenges popular notions of a uniform Hollywood style by disclosing uncanny networks of incongruities, coincidences, and contingencies at the margins of the cinematic frame. In an agile demonstration of "cinephiliac" historiography, Rashna Wadia Richards extracts intriguing film fragments from their seemingly ordinary narratives in order to explore what these unexpected moments reveal about the studio era. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's preference for studying cultural fragments rather than composing grand narratives, this unorthodox history of the films of the studio system reveals how classical Hollywood emerges as a disjointed network of accidents, excesses, and coincidences.

An innovative approach to the studio system and its films

Rashna Wadia Richards is Associate Professor and T. K. Young Chair of English at Rhodes College.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Inventing Cinephiliac Historiography
1. Sonic Booms: 1929 and the Sensational Transition to Sound
2. Show Stoppers: 1937 and the Chance Encounter with Chiffons
3. Signature Crimes: 1946 and the Strange Case of the Lost Scene (as Well as the Stranger Case of the Missing Auteur)
4. Apocalyptic Antennae: 1954 and the End of Storytelling
Conclusion: The Cinephiliac Return

Notes
Bibliography
Index