Celluloid Power: Social Film Criticism from the Birth of a Nation to Judgment at Nuremberg

In this unique anthology of social criticism, David Platt reprints the insightful contributions of more than fifty screenwriters, directors, producers, historians, and critics—men and women, radical and liberal, including not a few former political prisoners, deportees, and exiles—on diverse films from the earliest years of the film industry through the 1970s. Documentary films are included, and close attention is paid to nationalities and minorities. Among the contributors are Maxim Gorky, David Platt, Anthony Slide, Lewis Milestone, Jay Leyda, Kevin Brownlow, Harry Alan Potamkin, S.M. Einstein, Lewis Jacobs, Leo Seltzer, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., Jean Renoir, Abraham Polonsky, Lorraine Hansberry, Gale Sondergaard, Dalton Trumbo, Arthur Knight, and many others.