Includes bibliographical references (p. 308-328) and index

Film language -- Introduction to mise en scene -- Production design: sets, props and costumes -- Lighting -- Performance -- Sound (and music) -- Framing: position; depth of field; aspect ratio; height and angle (but not movement) -- Camera movement -- Editing -- Film stars as texts -- Film genre and narrative -- Defining genre -- The repertoire of elements -- Generic evolution -- Approaches to genre -- Twelve uses of genre -- Genre and audiences -- Introduction to narrative -- Todorov and Propp -- Story and plot -- Roland Barthes' narrative codes -- Other approaches -- Postmodern narratives -- Film as industry -- The beginning of cinema -- Hollywood-the formation of the major studios -- Hollywood and censorship -- Hollywood-the coming of sound -- Hollywood decline: the Paramount decrees and the baby boom -- New Hollywood? The early 1970s -- Package Hollywood -- Hollywood: conglomeration to media corporation -- The importance of Jaws -- Hollywood and the high concept -- The independent sector in North America -- The arthouse sector -- Selling cinema -- Genre and industry -- How new is contemporary Hollywood? -- Stars -- The publicity circus -- The DVD revolution -- Film festivals -- Conclusion: the shadow of Hollywood -- Film and theory -- Film and realism -- The auteur theory -- Structuralism and auteurism -- Screen theory - ideology -- Screen theory - psychoanalysis -- Screen theory - feminist analysis -- Spectatorship -- Third cinema and post-colonialism -- Postmodernism and poststructuralism -- Audience pleasures