A companion piece of sorts to the author's earlier Movie-Made Los Angeles, John Trafton's Los Angeles and Film charts the multi-dimensional nature of the city's reciprocal relationship with the industry that has defined it in the public imagination. Studying both films and what he terms “cinema-adjacent art forms,” including architecture and fine art, but also popular music and theme parks, Trafton deepens our appreciation of how a history of Los Angeles on film can also serve as a sociocultural study of American cinema in all of its diversity, from noir to the L.A. Rebellion, from disaster films to Chicano Cinema.

Charlie Keil, Professor, Cinema Studies Institute and Department of History, University of Toronto, Canada

To see the radial energies of Los Angeles and film through the multi focal lens that John Trafton brings into play is like looking into a historical kaleidoscope. Trafton's brilliant analysis illuminates a city, an art form, an industry, and a world.

Robert Burgoyne, Professor and Chair University (retired), St Andrews, UK