Violence and American cinema / edited by J. David Slocum.

This latest volume in our successful AFI Film Readers series analyzes violence, examining its nature, its effects, and its cinematic and social meaning.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : violence and American cinema : notes for an investigation / J. David Slocum -- Violence and film / William Rothman -- The violence of a perfect moment / Leo Charney -- Violence American style : the narrative orchestration of violent attractions / Marsha Kinder -- "Clean, dependable slapstick" : comic violence and the emergence of classical Hollywood cinema / Peter Kramer -- The spectacle of criminality / Richard Maltby -- Murder's tongue : identity, death, and the city in film noir / Paul Archer -- Violence in the film western / Lee Clark Mitchell -- Passion and acceleration : generic change in the action film / Rikke Schubart -- Black violence as cinema : from cheap thrills to historical agonies / Ed Guerrero -- Documenting domestic violence in American films / Phyllis Frus -- Splitting the difference : global identity politics and the representation of torture in the counterhistorical dramatic film / Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg -- Holocaust film criticism and the politics of Judeo-Christian phenomenology / Terri Ginsberb.