Public heroes : screening the gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of evil / Jonathan Munby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Munby, Jonathan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gangster films--United States--History and criticism.

Gangster films.

Crime films--United States--History and criticism.

Crime films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this study of Hollywood gangster films, Jonathan Munby examines their controversial content and how it was subjected to continual moral and political censure. Beginning in the early 1930's, these films told compelling stories about ethnic urban lower-class desires to "make it" in an America dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideals and devastated by the Great Depression. By the late 1940's, however, their focus shifted to the problems of a culture maladjusting to a new peacetime sociopolitical order governed by corporate capitalism. The gangster no longer challenged the establishment; the issue was not "making it," but simply "making do." Combining film analysis with archival material from the Production Code Administration (Hollywood's self-censoring authority), Munby shows how the industry circumvented censure, and how its altered gangsters (influenced by European filmmakers) fueled the infamous inquisitions of Hollywood in the postwar '40s and '50's by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Ultimately, this provocative study suggests that we rethink our ideas about crime and violence in depictions of Americans fighting against the status quo.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Screening Crime in the USA

1.. The Gangster's Silent Backdrop

2. The Enemy Goes Public

3. Manhattan Melodrama's "Art of the Weak"

4. Ganging Up against the Gangster

5. Crime, Inc.

6. Screening Crime the Liberal Consensus Way

7. The "Un-American" Film Art

Epilogue. From Gangster to Gangsta

Appendix. Production Code Administration Film Analysis Forms,1934-1957

Bibliography

Film Index

Subject Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-249) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612710759

9781282710757

1282710753

9780226550343

0226550346

OCLC:

655853838