Dreams & Dead Ends: The American Gangster FilmDreams and Dead Ends provides a compelling history of the twentieth-century American gangster film. Beginning with Little Caesar (1930) and ending with Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead (1995), Jack Shadoian adroitly analyzes twenty notable examples of the crime film genre. Moving chronologically through nearly seven decades, this volume offers illuminating readings of a select group of the classic films--including The Public Enemy, D.O.A., Bonnie and Clyde, and The Godfather--that best define and represent each period in the development of the American crime film. Richly illustrated with more than seventy film stills, Dreams and Dead Ends details the evolution of the genre through insightful and precise considerations of cinematography, characterization, and narrative style. This updated edition includes new readings of three additional movies--Once Upon a Time in America, Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, and Criss Cross--and brings this clear and lively discussion of the history of the gangster film to the end of the twentieth century. |
Contents
The Golden Age The Classic Gangster Film | 29 |
Little Caesar 1930 | 36 |
The Public Enemy 1931 | 50 |
Dark Transformations The Descent into Noir | 62 |
High Sierra 1941 | 68 |
The Killers 1948 | 80 |
The Genres Enllghtenment The Stress and Strain for Affirmation | 104 |
Kiss of Death 1947 | 108 |
Kiss Me Deadly 1955 | 220 |
Contemporary Colorations The Modernist Perspective | 236 |
Bonnie and Clyde 1967 | 244 |
Point Blank 1967 | 254 |
The Godfather 1972 The Godfather II 1975 and After | 268 |
Toward the 21st Century Frenzies and Despairs | 276 |
Once upon a Time in America 1984 | 285 |
Things to Do in Denver When Youre Dead 1995 | 293 |
Force of Evil 1948 | 119 |
Gun Crazy 1949 | 131 |
Going Gray and Going Crazy Disequilibrium and Change at Midcentary | 145 |
DOA 1949 | 150 |
White Heat 1949 | 163 |
Focus on Feeling Seeing through the Fifties | 176 |
Pickup on South Street 1953 | 186 |
99 River Street 1953 The Phoenix City Story 1955 The Brothers Rico 1957 | 196 |
Criss Cross One to Watch Over and Over | 307 |
GangsterCrimeNoirPostNoir The Top 14 | 323 |
50 PostGodfather CrimeNoir Films Worth a Look | 328 |
Aging Well 50 Vintage GangsterCrimeNoir Films | 329 |
Notes | 337 |
355 | |
361 | |
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Common terms and phrases
99 River Street action American Anna audience Bart and Laurie becomes Big Combo Bigelow Bonnie and Clyde Brothers Rico brutality camera characters cinema close-up Cody crime film criminal Criss Cross critical dark Dead Ends Director Dreams & Dead Earle Eddie emotions Ernie fifties Film Noir film's Force of Evil frame Fuller gang gangster film gangster/crime film genre Godfather Godfather II Gun Crazy Hammer hero High Sierra human Jarrett Jimmy Karlson killed Killers kind Kiss Me Deadly Kiss of Death Kitty Kubik Little Caesar live look Lubinsky means Modern Art moral movie Museum of Modern narrative never Nick Phenix City Story Pickup on South play Point Blank Public Enemy reality Reardon Rico's says scene screen seems sense sequence sexual shoots shot Skip social society Steve style Swede takes things tion Velma viewer violence visual Walker Walsh wants White Heat
Popular passages
Page 4 - Meanings emerge whether deliberately or not about the nature of the society and the kind of individual it creates. By definition, the genre must shed light on either the society or the outcasts who oppose it, and by definition the gangster is outside, or anti, the legitimate social order. The gangster/crime film is therefore a way of gaining a perspective on society by creating worlds and figures that are outside it. Its basic situation holds that distinction, and the meanings it continues to produce...
Page 3 - The gangster film is a genre like pornography and the horror film, held in contempt socially and intellectually not because it may corrupt and not because it is artistically inferior to other kinds of film but because it realizes our dreams, exposes our deepest psychic urges The...