From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age
uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. In this original study, author Andrew Utterson charts the beginnings of digital cinema, addressing both how filmmakers used new digital technologies and how attitudes and anxieties about the rise of the computer were represented in films such as Walter Lang's
Desk Set
, Jean-Luc Godard's
Alphaville,
Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey
and Michael Crichton's
Westworld
. At once both timely and historically-grounded,
From IBM to MGM
focuses on cinema's earliest encounters with computers, as filmmakers like John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and other pioneers responded to the flurry of digital devices that emerged in the post-war decades.