or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime free trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn more
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
or
Get a £1.10 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card
Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from "Little Caesar" to "Touch of Evil"
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from "Little Caesar" to "Touch of Evil" [Paperback]

Jonathan Munby (Author)
RRP: £16.00
Price: £15.20 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £0.80 (5%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.
Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, June 7? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover £35.28   -- --
Paperback £15.20   -- --
Trade In this Item for up to £1.10
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from "Little Caesar" to "Touch of Evil" for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.10, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.

Frequently Bought Together

Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from "Little Caesar" to "Touch of Evil" + The Gangster Film Reader + American Gangster Cinema: From "Little Caesar" to "Pulp Fiction" (Crime Files)
Price For All Three: £52.59

Some of these items are dispatched sooner than the others. Show details

Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product details

More About the Author

Jonathan Munby
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Jonathan Munby Page

Product Description

Product Description

In this study of Hollywood gangster films, Jonathan Munby examines their controversial content and how it was subjected to continual moral and political censure. Beginning in the early 1930s, these films told compelling stories about ethnic urban lower-class desires to "make it" in an America dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideals and devastated by the Great Depression. By the late 1940s, however, their focus shifted to the problems of a culture maladjusting to a new peacetime sociopolitical order governed by corporate capitalism. The gangster no longer challenged the establishment; the issue was not "making it," but simply "making do". Combining film analysis with archival material from the Production Code Administration (Hollywood's self-censoring authority), Munby shows how the industry circumvented censure, and how its altered gangsters (influenced by European filmmakers) fueled the infamous inquisitions of Hollywood in the postwar 40s and 50s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Ultimately, this study suggests that one rethinks ideas about crime and violence in depictions of Americans fighting against the status quo.

About the Author

Jonathan Munby is senior lecturer in film studies and American studies at Lancaster University. He is the author of Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from 'Little Caesar' to 'Touch of Evil' also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
On July 15, 1935, Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), declared a moratorium on all gangster film production in Hollywood. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  2 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Why do we like gangster films? 9 May 2000
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is a very exciting book about why many people find gangster films appealing and why at the same time lots of institutions of authority have found them to be threatening, right from the very beginning. For example, it provides a detailed background of the gangster film's origins in the early '30s, exploring matters such as the motivations for Prohibition, anti-immigration movements, and what was taken to be "proper" American speech, in order to provide a sense of the feelings of resentment these films tapped into and why their early viewers were so excited by them.

This sense of how gangster films have continually spoken for those otherwise ignored marks one of the book's most important themes. It also helps to provide an explanation of how the gangster film changed over the decades in response to attacks, both direct and indirect. The book describes and explains the gangster film's continual battles with various censors, within and without Hollywood, to show how these films continually evolved in ways that enabled them to cater again and again to those who would dissent with an oppressive status quo. Of especial interest is the chapter on German _film noir_ directors, which provides a very plausible account of why much _noir_ should be subsumed under the gangster genre. Dealing with the same issues of subversiveness and critical perspectives of existing power structures, much standard _film noir_ is more a continuation of the gangster film tradition than a break with it. Lots of other critics have noted this connection between these two types of films, but few have argued for it as forcefully, as clearly, or in as much detail as Munby. A tantalizing epilogue links these films to gangsta movies of the 1990s, a connection that one hopes will be worked out in more detail in the future.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about _Public Enemies, Public Heroes_, however, is that it explains how the violence and crime of gangster films appeals to us in ways that largely avoid the jargon-heavy vocabulary of much film studies scholarship today. The style, while dense, is not overlayed with extensive theoretical termimology. One can tell that Munby has reflected deeply on these matters and how to explain them to an audience that isn't necessarily a part of current theoretical discussions of film.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wished to understand better both the appeal of gangster films and what these films have typically reacted against. It shows that crime and violence, in narrative contexts, may be used to express in vivid and at times graphic detail objections to those things that order and structure our lives in oppressive ways.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Absolutely essential reading for film scholars 13 Jan 2006
By Jezebel - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Munby's book examines the gangster film in relation to industrial and cultural history and particularly the forces of censorship or moralism in Hollywood. This brilliant book tackles difficult questions of cultural analysis and film history and is eloquent to boot. Stellar reading, really inspiring for film--especially gangster genre--scholars.

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject























i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges