Mob Culture

Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film

Edited by Lee Grieveson, Esther Sonnet and Peter Stanfield

Contributions by Esther Sonnet, Giorgio Bertellini, Richard Maltby, Ronald Wilson, Mary Elizabeth Strunk, Martha Nochimson, Jonathan Munby and Gaylyn Studlar

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Subjects:Film, Media Studies, and Communications, American Studies

326 Pages, 6.1 x 9.3 in

Paperback
9780813535579
Published: April 28, 2005

$38.95 S

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Sinister, swaggering, yet often sympathetic, the figure of the gangster has stolen and murdered its way into the hearts of American cinema audiences. Despite the enduring popularity of the gangster film, however, traditional criticism has focused almost entirely on a few canonical movies such as Little Caesar, Public Enemy, and The Godfather trilogy, resulting in a limited and distorted understanding of this diverse and changing genre.

Mob Culture offers a long-awaited, fresh look at the American gangster film, exposing its hidden histories from the Black Hand gangs of the early twentieth century to The Sopranos. Departing from traditional approaches that have typically focused on the "nature" of the gangster, the editors have collected essays that engage the larger question of how the meaning of criminality has changed over time. Grouped into three thematic sections, the essays examine gangster films through the lens of social, gender, and racial/ethnic issues.

Destined to become a classroom favorite, Mob Culture is an indispensable reference for future work in the genre.

Gangsters and governance in the silent era / Lee Grieveson
Why boys go wrong : gangsters, hoodlums, and the natural history of delinquent careers / Richard Maltby
Gang busters : the Kefauver Crime Committee and the syndicate films of the 1950s / Ronald W. Wilson
Ladies love brutes : reclaiming female pleasures in the lost history of Hollywood gangster cycles, 1929-1931 / Esther Sonnet
A gunsel is being beaten : gangster masculinity and the homoerotics of the crime film, 1941-1942 / Gaylyn Studlar
Mother Barker : film star and Public Enemy No. 1 / Mary Elizabeth Strunk
"Good evening gentlemen, can I check your hats please?" : masculinity, dress, and the retro gangster cycles of the 1990s / Esther Sonnet and Peter Stanfield
Waddaya lookin' at? : re-reading the gangster film through The sopranos / Martha P. Nochimson
Black hands and white hearts : Southern Italian immigrants, crime, and race in early American cinema / Giorgio Bertellini
"American like chop suey" : invocations of gangsters in Chinatown, 1920-1935 / Peter Stanfield
The underworld films of Oscar Micheaux and Ralph Cooper : toward a genealogy of the Black screen gangster / Jonathan Munby
Walking the streets : Black gangsters and the "abandoned city" in the 1970s blaxploitation cycle / Peter Stanfield

Lee Grieveson is the director of the graduate program in film studies at University College London and the author of Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America.

Esther Sonnet is a principal lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and has published numerous articles on contemporary film, gender, and sexuality.

Peter Stanfield is a senior lecturer in film studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury and the author of Hollywood, Westerns and the 1930s: The Lost Trail.

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Mob Culture

Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film

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Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film

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