Mob Culture: Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film

(Hardback)

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The gangster is perhaps the most potent figure in American cinema. Yet film criticism has focused almost entirely on a few canonical films such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and The Godfather trilogy, resulting in a limited and distorted understanding of the compelling presence and persistence of the gangster. Mob Culture presents a detailed examination of the ideological richness of the gangster film throughout Hollywood's production history, from the silent period to the present.Mob Culture explores how the gangster figure has been connected to various cultural and racial identities, how issues of gender and sexuality are frequently highlighted by the genre, and how film criticism has drawn on eugenics, sociology and psychology to try to explain and contain the gangster. An ideal guide to both the film history and the critical literature, Mob Culture redefines the American gangster at the movies.

Reviews

'This book does a fine job at what it sets out to do - to redefine the American gangster genre.' William Luhr, Saint Peter's College 'Mob Cultures uncovers new aspects of the gangster genre, from its dress codes to its relation to government investigation, from gangsters on nickelodeon screens to HBO series, from Tong wars in Chinatown to the African American gangster in race films. Think you know the gangster genre Read this book and discover dimensions you never dreamed of.' Tom Gunning, University of Chicago

Author Bio

Lee Grieveson is Director of the Graduate Programme in Film Studies at University College London and co-editor of The Silent Cinema. Esther Sonnet is Principal Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Peter Stanfield is Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury and author of Hollywood, Westerns, and the 1930s