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Commercial Cinema: The History of the Advertising Film in the United States
Paperback
AccountingBusiness GeneralFilm Studies
PREORDER - Expected ship date December 15, 2026
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ISBN10: 0252089553
ISBN13: 9780252089558
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: Dec 15 2026
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780252089558
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: Dec 15 2026
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.00
Language: English
Film audiences resisted blatant ads since cinema's earliest days. The advertising film arose as a movie that masqueraded as entertainment or instruction to achieve its goals. Martin L. Johnson reveals the evasive history of advertising films through the actions of individuals, corporate sponsors and producers, and government agencies and non-profits that made, circulated, and showed them. An advertising film placed promotional content into movies presented as travelogues, educational shorts, industrial films, or scenes of daily life. Business and government, meanwhile, built systems to distribute the films to unsuspecting audiences in schools, churches, civic groups, and universities. Through experimentation, corporations honed sophisticated tools of persuasion that used moving images to influence the public. What they learned reshaped notions of storytelling, technology, and corporate communication while setting the stage for advertising's symbiotic relationship with television. Persuasive and expert, Commercial Cinema illuminates the changing fortunes and eventual fate of a film genre in disguise.
1 different editions
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Commercial Cinema: The History of the Advertising Film in the United States
Johnson, Martin L.
Hardcover
$165.00
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Johnson, Martin L.
Commercial Cinema: The History of the Advertising Film in the United States
Johnson, Martin L.
Hardcover
$165.00
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