An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory

An Everyday Magic is a major contribution to understanding both the role of cinema in its heyday and the nature of popular memory. Drawing on original interviews with cinema-goers and contemporary ideas in cultural history and cultural memory, Annette Kuhn explores cinema-going in the 1930s, examining for example how cinema provided glamour to young people growing up in an austere climate of 'making do'; how audiences looked to their screen heroines and heroes for inspiration, and the important role of cinema-going in courtship, romance and make-believe.