Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction 1
5. Part I. Comedy
6. Chapter One. Comedy’s Greatest Era 11
7. Chapter Two. Silent Film Comedy 34
8. Chapter Three. Uncle Sam’s Funny Bone 39
9. Chapter Four. Whatever Happened to Hollywood Comedy 53
10. Chapter Five. The Evolution of the Chase in the Silent Screen Comedy 60
11. Chapter Six. From Kops to Robbers: Transformation of Archetypal Figures in the American Cinema of the 1920s and ’30s 70
12. Part II. The Western
13. Chapter Seven. The Psychological Appeal of the Hollywood Western 77
14. Chapter Eight. The Western, or the American Film Par Excellence 93
15. Chapter Nine. The Olympian Cowboy 103
16. Chapter Ten. The Changing Cowboy: From Dime Novel to Dollar Film 115
17. Chapter Eleven. Sociological Symbolism of the “Adult Western” 125
18. Chapter Twelve. Puritanism Revisited: An Analysis of the Contemporary Screen-Image Western 133
19. Part III. The Fantastic
20. Chapter Thirteen. Supernaturalism in the Movies 149
21. Chapter Fourteen. Reflections on Horror Movies 159
22. Chapter Fifteen. A Brief, Tragical History of the Science Fiction Film 171
23. Chapter Sixteen. The Imagination of Disaster 186
24. Chapter Seventeen. Extrapolative Cinema 202
25. Chapter Eighteen. Even a Man Who Is Pure at Heart: Poetry and Danger in the Horror Film 211
26. Part IV. Crime and Punishment
27. Chapter Nineteen. The Gangster as Tragic Hero 223
28. Chapter Twenty. Evolution of the Thriller 232
29. Chapter Twenty-One. Toward a Definition of Film Noir 242
30. Chapter Twenty-Two. Paint It Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir 252
31. Chapter Twenty-Three. Introduction to The Gangster Film 273
32. Index 283