[4] Polonsky helped set the intellectual tone of the journal by allowing his celebrated script for the radio drama, "The Case of David Smith", to be printed in the January 1946 issue.

The turn toward "politically safe" work in subsequent years led to editorial discord until August Frugé, then-director of UC Press, clarified the revised mission of the journal.

Shortly after FQ's 40th anniversary, the University of California Press published a Film Quarterly anthology of its groundbreaking essays, co-edited by Brian Henderson and Ann Martin.

In 2002, Ann Martin and Eric Smoodin (who was then the Film, Media, and Philosophy Acquisitions Editor at UC Press) co-edited a volume of highlights from the journal's Hollywood Quarterly (1945–1951) years.

Film Quarterly has emphasized the shifting forms and meanings the moving image has taken in the digital age and worked to expand its views of the field and the writers included in its pages.

Special dossiers have focused on Joshua Oppenheimer's ground-breaking The Act of Killing, the cinema of Richard Linklater, the significance of Brazilian documentarian Edouardo Coutinho, the legacy of Chantal Akerman, and a collection of Manifestos for the current era.

Cover stories have focused on such films and television series as Melvin Van Peebles' The Watermelon Man, Louis Massiah's The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Jill Soloway's Transparent, and Kenya Barris's Black-ish.

Under Rich's editorship, Film Quarterly aimed to widen the scope of voices published in its pages, create a shared discourse for divergent platforms, and broaden the canon beyond traditional auteurism.