Decoding the Movies

Richard Maltby is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Screen Studies at Flinders University, South Australia. He moved to Flinders from the UK, where he established the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter, before becoming Research Professor in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University.His publications include Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and Cinema, Audiences and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History (Routledge, 2011), Hollywood Cinema (Wiley-Blackwell), Dreams for Sale: Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century (Harrap). ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 1925–1939, co-edited with Andrew Higson (UEP 1999), was winner of the prestigious Prix Jean Mitry for cinema history in 2000.He is a Series Editor of Exeter Studies in Film History.

• Part 1: Decodings Introduction: “What the Hell, It’s Only History …” 2 “A Brief Romantic Interlude”: Dick and Jane Go To Threeand- a-Half Seconds of the Classical Hollywood Cinema 3 “As Close to Real Life as Hollywood Ever Gets”: Headline Pictures, Topical Movies, Editorial Cinema and Studio Realism in the 1930sPart 2: Patriarchs 4 “Just Another Good Program Picture from Warners”: The Misadventures of Barbara Stanwyck and Friedrich Nietzsche at Warner Bros., 1933 5 Clark Gable, the Production Code and the Recreation of the Patriarch: It Happened One Night 6 Sex and Shirley TemplePart 3: Criminals 7 Criminal Entertainers: Al Capone, Howard Hughes and the Production Code 8 “Gangland as It Really Is”: James Cagney, Horatio Alger and the Natural History of Delinquent Careers 9 “Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, Living or Dead …”: Martin Mooney, Edward G. Robinson and the Incorporation of Dutch Schultz10 AfterwordNotes Select Bibliography Index