Architecture for the Screen: A Critical Study of Set Design in Hollywood's Golden Age

It is unlikely that you have ever found yourself trapped inside a burning skyscraper or entombed within an Egyptian pyramid. Nonetheless, you probably have some idea of these and many other places because of their portrayal on screen. The movies have overcome the constraints of time and place by bringing us images of diverse and otherwise unfamiliar settings.

This work covers the many applications of art and architecture appearing in the movies produced in Hollywood from the very beginning until the fifties. The first chapters deal with the process of design, construction, physical characteristics and immediate functions of a wide variety of architectural sets. The remaining chapters examine the great number of styles shown in those movies and take the reader up to the final triumph of modernist architecture in the aftermath of the Second World War.