Reel Rituals

Ritual occasions in the movies can bring us to laughter and tears and hope and regret; the chords they strike suggest the complex intersection between American movies and our lives. Major ritual occasions of weddings, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, funerals, graduations, and birthday parties appear in hundreds of popular films produced by Hollywood throughout the 20th century. This study suggests that these stock scenes are more significant to American film than we might have thought.