Noted scholar Imelda Whelehan looks at popular fiction adaptations released during this period and considers the impact of social change, film consumption and cultural tastes in the years after the Second World War.
This instalment in the Bloomsbury Adaptation Histories series discusses a rich and exciting period of US history and shatters the myth that only bad books make good films. Exploring films including It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House (1948), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), The Searchers, (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), Peyton Place (1957) and The Fly (1958), it argues that middlebrow fiction and film thrived in a symbiotic relationship, exploring pressing social issues of the day and articulating the experience of living in a fast-changing world riven by political, social and material uncertainties.