pt. 1. The silent era. Introduction : Intolerance and the rise of the feature film
Silent film as social criticism : front page movies / Kay Sloan
Silent cinema as historical mythmaker : Birth of a nation, propaganda as history / John Hope Franklin
Silent comedy as cultural commentary : work, ideology and Chaplin's tramp / Charles Musser
The revolt against Victorianism : Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and the new personality, 1914-1918 / Lary May
Primary sources. Edison v. American Mutoscope Company ; "The nickel madness" / Barton W. Currie ; Fighting a vicious film : protest against "The birth of a nation" / Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ; Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio / United States Supreme Court
pt. 2. Hollywood's golden age. Introduction : backstage during the Great Depression : 42nd Street, Gold diggers of 1933, and Footlight parade.
Depression America and its films : laughing through tears : Hollywood answers to the Depression / Maury Klein
The Depression's human toll : gangsters and fallen women / Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy
Depression allegories : Gone with the wind and The grapes of wrath as Hollywood histories of the Great Depression / Thomas H. Pauly
African Americans on the silver screen : the evolution of black film / Thomas R. Cripps
Orson Welles as poet and historian : the Magnificent Ambersons / Charles Higham
Primary sources. The introduction of sound. "Pictures that talk" / Photoplay ; Review of Don Juan / Mordaunt Hall ; "Silence is golden" / Aldous Huxley ; Film censorship. The sins of Hollywood ; "The don'ts and be carefuls" / Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America ; The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930.
pt. 3. Wartime Hollywood. Introduction : Hollywood's World War II combat films
Wartime films as instruments of propaganda : what to show the world : the Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945 / Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black
Casablanca as propaganda : you must remember this : the case of Hal Wallis' Casablanca / Randy Roberts
Bureau of motion pictures report : feature review
How World War II affected women : Mildred Pierce and women in film / June Sochen
Primary source. U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings on motion picture and radio propaganda, 1941
pt. 4. Postwar Hollywood. Introduction : double indemnity and film noir
The red scare in Hollywood : HUAC and the end of an era / Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy
A perverse tribute to Hollywood's past : Sunset Boulevard / Lois Banner
The morality of informing : ambivalence in On the waterfront / Kenneth R. Hey
Science fiction as social commentary : the age of conspiracy and conformity : Invasion of the body snatchers (1956) / Stuart Samuels
The western as cold war film : gunfighters and Green Berets : The magnificent seven and the myth of counter-insurgency / Richard Slotkin
Primary sources. United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. ; Hearings regarding the Communist infiltration of the motion-picture-industry activities in the United States / U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American activities ; The miracle decision : Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, Commissioner of Education of New York, et al.
pt. 5. Hollywood since Vietnam. Introduction : Bonnie and Clyde
A shifting sensibility : Dr. Strangelove : nightmare comedy and the ideology of liberal consensus / Charles Maland
Films of the late sixties and early seventies : from counterculture to counterrevolution, 1967-1971 / Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner
Reaffirming traditional values : the blue collar ethnic in bicentennial America : Rocky / Daniel J. Leab
Coming to terms with the Vietnam War : distorted images, missed opportunities / James S. Olson and Randy Roberts
Films of the eighties : the yuppie texts / William Joe Palmer
Our movie-made president : no method to his madness / Richard Schickel
Primary source. The Hollywood rating system.
