Catholics In The Movies

Download or read book Catholics in the Movies written by Colleen McDannell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholicism was all over movie screens in 2004. Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ was at the center of a media firestorm for months. A priest was a crucial character in the Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about how religious stories should be represented, marketed, and received. Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals have been stock features in popular films since the silent era. An intensely visual religion with a well-defined ritual and authority system, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Moviegoers watch as Catholic visionaries interact with the supernatural, priests counsel their flocks, reformers fight for social justice, and bishops wield authoritarian power. Rather than being marginal to American popular culture, Catholic people, places, and rituals are all central to the world of the movie. Catholics in the Movies begins with an introductory essay that orients readers to the ways that films appear in culture and describes the broad trends that can be seen in the movies hundred-year history of representing Catholics. Each chapter is written by a noted scholar of American religion who concentrates on one movie that engages important historical, artistic, and religious issues and then places the film within American cultural and social history, discusses the film as an expression of Catholic concerns of the period, and relates the film to others of its genre. Tracing the story of American Catholic history through popular films, Catholics in the Movies should be a valuable resource for anyone interested in American Catholicism and religion and film.

Download or read book Hollywood Censored written by Gregory D. Black and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a series of sex scandals rocked the film industry in 1922, movie moguls hired Will Hays to clear the image of movies. Hays tried a variety of ways to regulate movies before adopting what became known as the production code. Written in 1930 by a St Louis priest, the code stipulated that movies stress proper behaviour, respect for government, and 'Christian values'. The Catholic Church reinforced these efforts by launching its Legion of Decency in 1934. Intended to force Hays and Hollywood to censor films, the Legion of Decency engineered the appointment of Joseph Breen as head of the Production Code Administration. For the next three decades, Breen, Hays, and the Catholic Legion of Decency virtually controlled the content of all Hollywood films.

Download or read book Letter to Artists written by John Paul II and published by LiturgyTrainingPublications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meeting House Essays in a series of papers reflecting on the mystery, beauty and practicalities of the place of worship. This popular series was begun in 1991, and each resource focuses on a particular aspect of space, design or materials and how they relate to the liturgy.

Download or read book The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975 written by Gregory D. Black and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-13 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three decades the Catholic church, through its Legion of Decency, had the power to control the content of Hollywood films. From the mid-1930s to the late 1960s the Catholic Legion served as a moral guardian for the American public. Hollywood studios submitted their films to the Legion for a rating, which varied from general approval to condemnation. This book details how a religious organisation got control of Hollywood, and how films like A Streetcar Named Desire, Lolita, and Tea and Sympathy were altered by the Legion to make them morally acceptable. Documenting the inner workings of the Legion, The Catholic Crusade against the Movies also examines how the changes in the movie industry, and American society at large in the post-World War II era, eventually conspired against the Legion's power and so lead to its demise.

Download or read book Christians in the Movies written by Peter E. Dans and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains summaries of nearly two hundred Christian-themed movies made between 1905 and 2008, each with commentary; arranged chronologically by decade to highlight the decline in positive portrayals.

Download or read book Catholics in the Movies written by Colleen McDannell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The common admission that "everything I know about religion I learned from the movies" is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the silent era of film and ending with movies today, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema.

Download or read book Through a Catholic Lens written by Peter Malone and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-04-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Movies are often examined for subtext and dramatizations of social and psychological issues as well as current movements. Studies of well-known Catholic directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, have made the search for Catholic themes a reputable field of examination. Through a Catholic Lens continues the search for these themes and examines the Catholic undercurrents by studying nineteen film directors from around the world. Although these directors may or may not be practicing Catholics, their Catholic background can be found in their writing and directing. Each chapter, written by a different contributor, analyzes one film of each director for its Catholic motifs. With the recent increase of cinema studies, this collection will be of interest to students and academics as well as cinema buffs.