Barry Langford explains and interrogates the concept of postclassical Hollywood cinema - its coherence, historical justification, and value in helping or hindering our understanding of Hollywood from the forties to today. Merging film history together with movies' social and political dimensions and Hollywood's distinctive methods of storytelling, Post-Classical Hollywood charts key critical debates and the histories they interpret, while offering its own account of the post-classical. Post-Classical Hollywood offers new perspective on the most enduringly fascinating artform of our age.