front cover of City That Never Sleeps
City That Never Sleeps
New York and the Filmic Imagination
Pomerance, Murray
Rutgers University Press, 2007
New York, more than any other city, has held a special fascination for filmmakers and viewers. In every decade of Hollywood filmmaking, artists of the screen have fixated upon this fascinating place for its tensions and promises, dazzling illumination and fearsome darkness.

The glittering skyscrapers of such films as On the Town have shadowed the characteristic seedy streets in which desperate, passionate stories have played out-as in Scandal Sheet and The Pawnbroker. In other films, the city is a cauldron of bright lights, technology, empire, egotism, fear, hunger, and change--the scenic epitome of America in the modern age.

From Street Scene and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Rosemary's Baby, The Warriors, and 25th Hour, the sixteen essays in this book explore the cinematic representation of New York as a city of experience, as a locus of ideographic characters and spaces, as a city of moves and traps, and as a site of allurement and danger. Contributors consider the work of Woody Allen, Blake Edwards, Alfred Hitchcock, Gregory La Cava, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, Vincente Minnelli, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, and numerous others. 
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Directing
Virginia Wright Wexman
Rutgers University Press, 2017
When a film is acclaimed, the director usually gets the lion’s share of the credit. Yet the movie director’s job—especially the collaborations and compromises it involves—remains little understood. 

The latest volume in the Behind the Silver Screen series, this collection provides the first comprehensive overview of how directing, as both an art and profession, has evolved in tandem with changing film industry practices. Each chapter is written by an expert on a different period of Hollywood, from the silent film era to today’s digital filmmaking, providing in-depth examinations of key trends like the emergence of independent production after World War II and the rise of auteurism in the 1970s. Challenging the myth of the lone director, these studies demonstrate how directors work with a multitude of other talented creative professionals, including actors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers.   

Directing examines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, offering a rich composite picture of how they have negotiated industry constraints, utilized new technologies, and harnessed the creative contributions of their many collaborators throughout a century of Hollywood filmmaking.  
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Headline Hollywood
A Century of Film Scandal
McLean, Adrienne L
Rutgers University Press, 2001
Hollywood has long been associated with scandal--with covering it up, with managing its effects, and, in some cases, with creating and directing it. In putting together Headline Hollywood, Adrienne McLean and David Cook approach the relationship between Hollywood and scandal from a fresh perspective. The contributors consider some of the famous transgressions that shocked Hollywood and its audiences during the last century, and explore the changing meaning of scandal over time by zeroing in on issues of power: Who decides what crimes and misdemeanors should be circulated for public consumption and titillation? What makes a Hollywood scandal scandalous? What are the uses of scandal? The essays are arranged chronologically to show how Hollywood scandals have evolved relative to changing moral and social orders. This collection will prove essential to the field of film studies as well as to anyone interested in the character and future direction of American culture. Contributors are Mark Lynn Anderson, Cynthia Baron, James Castonguay, Nancy Cook, Mary Desjardins, Lucy Fischer, Lee Grieveson, Erik Hedling, Peter Lehman, William Luhr, Adrienne L. McLean, Susan McLeland, and Sam Stoloff. Adrienne L. McLean is an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. David A. Cook is a professor of film and media studies at Emory University. He is the author of A History of Film Narrative.
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The Maltese Falcon
John Huston, director
Luhr, William
Rutgers University Press, 1995
Few films have had the impact or retained the popularity of The Maltese Falcon. An unexpected hit upon its release in 1941, it helped establish the careers of John Huston and Humphrey Bogart while also helping both to transform the detective genre of movies and to create film noir. This volume includes an introduction by its editor and a shot-by-shot continuity of the film, as well as essays on its production, on literary and film traditions it drew upon, and on its reputation and influence over the last half century. Included are reviews from the time of the film's original release, the enthusiastic French response in 1946 that helped define film noir, and a close formal anaylsis of the film. In addition, the volume contains a comparison of this version to earlier film versions of the Dashiell Hammett novel, and helpful explorations of cultural, historical, and psychoanalytic issues. Like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon has attained iconic status; this volume will contribute to the pleasure its many fans find in viewing the film again and again. William Luhr is a professor of English at St. Peter's College in New Jersey. He is the author of Raymond Chandler and Film and co-author of Blake Edwards and other books.
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Screening Genders
The American Science Fiction Film
Gabbard, Krin
Rutgers University Press, 2008
Gender roles have been tested, challenged, and redefined everywhere during the past thirty years, but perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in film. Screening Genders is a lively and engaging introduction to the evolving representations of masculinity, femininity, and places once thought to be "in between."

The book begins with a general introduction that traces the movement of gender theory from the margins of film studies to its center. The ten essays that follow address a range of topics, including screen stars; depictions of gay, straight, queer, and transgender subjects; and the relationship between gender and genre. Widely respected scholars, including Robert T. Eberwein, Lucy Fischer, Chris Holmlund, E. Ann Kaplan, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, David Lugowski, Patricia Mellencamp, Jerry Mosher, Jacqueline Reich, and Chris Straayer, focus on the radical ideological advances of contemporary cinema, as well as on those groundbreaking films that have shaped our ideas about masculinity and femininity, not only in movies but in American culture at large.

The first comprehensive overview of the history of gender theory in film, this book is an ideal text for courses and will serve as a foundation for further discussion among students and scholars alike.
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