Perry Mason was one of the most successful television programs from the 1950s and remains one of the most influential crime melodramas from any period. The show’s influence goes far beyond its nine-y
This book surveys the entire range of crime films, including important subgenres such as the gangster film, the private eye film, film noir, as well as the victim film, the erotic thriller, and the crime comedy. Focusing on ten films that span the range of the twentieth century, Thomas Leitch traces the transformation of the three leading figures that are common to all crime films: the criminal, the victim and the avenger. Analyzing how each of the subgenres establishes oppositions among its ritual antagonists, he shows how the distinctions among them become blurred throughout the course of the century. This blurring, Leitch maintains, reflects and fosters a deep social ambivalence towards crime and criminals, while the criminal, victim and avenger characters effectively map the shifting relations between subgenres, such as the erotic thriller and the police film, within the larger genre of crime film that informs them all.
Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has been a lightning rod for debates about knowledge and traditional authority. It has come under particular scrutiny from publishers of print encyclopedias and col
This collection of forty new essays, written by the leading scholars in adaptation studies and distinguished contributors from outside the field, is the most comprehensive volume on adaptation ever pu
Most books on film adaptation -- the relation between films and their literary sources -- focus on a series of close one-to-one comparisons between specific films and canonical novels. This volume id
Developing a model of narrative based on game theory, Thomas Leitch offers a compelling new explanation for the distinctiveness and power of Hitchcock's films. Games such as the director's famous came
From William Dicksons Rip Van Winkle films (1896) to Baz Luhrmanns big-budget production of The Great Gatsby (2013) and beyond, cinematic adaptations of American literature participate in a rich and f
