Includes index.

pt. 1. Home alone with classic cinema. You pays your money
Peeping
Screening
Televising
Digitizing
Laughter and tears
pt. 2. Directors and stars. Touched by Ernst Lubitsch
The John Ford code
Three by Howard Hawks
Frank Capra, true believer
Guilty: Alfred Hitchcock
That wild so-and-so William A. Wellman
The Orson Welles dilemma
John Brahm: the evil that men do
Michael Curtiz's Doris Day period
Anthony Mann of the west
Sam Fuller's pulp cinema
Akira Kurosawa's deep focus
Medieval Ingmar Bergman: God is in the house, maybe
Sergio Leone: heroes, villains, and idiots
Sidney Lumet's family plots
The magical unreality of Lech Majewski
Edward Yang's family ties
Houdini escapes! from the vaults! of the past!
Joan Crawfor is dangerous
Bette Davis, bigger than life
The serenity of Alice Faye
Edward G. Robinson, see
Humphrey Bogart: falcons and fascists
Let's be Frank [Sinatra]
James Stewart: no more Mr. Nice Guy
Boris Karloff: he's alive!
pt. 3. Movies by genre. Biopics. A legend in his own mind (El Cid)
Lust for lives (Young Mr. Lincoln, Lust for life)
Felonious Munch (Edvard Munch)
Hitler's magic flute (Hamsun, Hunger)
Fantasy/Horror. Early German psychos (German expressionism collection)
It wasn't Beauty killed the Beast (King Kong, Grass, Chang)
Masters and grandmasters (The thief of Bagdad, Icons of adventure)
Urban legend (Blade runner)
Carnivores (Dark Sky Films)
Comedy. Running for a train (The general)
Road warrior (Traffic)
Literary adaptations. Prestige and pretense (Pride and prejudice)
An unhappy film in its own way (Anna Karenina)
Classics and semi-classics illustrated (Literary Classics Collection)
A Rosetta Stone for the 1950s (Ben-Hur, The man who fell to earth, Bad timing)
John Huston's novel approach (Under the volcano)
Lights! camera! talk! (Tennessee Williams)
Maxiseries (A dance to the music of time, Fabio Montale)
Musicals. Who's afraid of Al Jolson? (The jazz singer)
Pennies from heaven (The threepenny opera)
Habit forming (The Busby Berkeley Collection)
Smilin' them to death (Hallelujah, The green pastures, Cabin in the sky)
Vaudeville (Bing Crosby: Screen Legend Collection)
Techni-glory (The tales of Hoffman, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Gregory Hines)
Casting doubts (Fiddler on the roof, Presenting Lily Mars)
How jazzed can you get? (Passing through, A great day in Harlem, Blues in the night, Pete Kelly's blues)
The Disney (and anti-Disney) version. Battling Nazis with sambas (Saludos amigos, The three caballeros)
Dog days (Lady and the the tramp, Hayao Miyazaki, Max and Dave Fleischer)
Uncle Walt's prairie home companion (True-life adventures)
Crime/Noir. Men without Molls (Gangsters Collection, vol.3)
Elementary (Charlie Chan, Michael Shayne)
To coin a genre (Kino's film noir)
New Grubb Streets (Film Noir Classic Collection, vol.4)
The deadly forties (I wake up screaming, When strangers marry)
Who is Harry Lime? (The third man)
Joker (Ace in the hole)
Salvage jobs (Affair in Trinidad, The garment jungle)
Mob mentality (Mafioso, Excellent cadavers)
War/Agitprop. Wars to end wars (All quiet on the western front, 49th parallel)
Love the warriors (Overlord, The guns of Navarone, The Caine mutiny)
Theater of the absurd (Merrill's marauders)
In search of lost time (Muriel, La belle captive)
A Soviet guide to Cuba (I am Cuba)
The redmen are coming (Indianerfilmes)
Recalling the future of nuclear war (The war game, Culloden)

The author explores more than 200 films, classics and neglected gems