| Illustrations | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction. Bucking the Zeitgeist | p. 1 |
| Glimpses of History | p. 25 |
| Better Red than Dead (Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists) | p. 29 |
| You Can't Go Home Again (Moscow on the Hudson) | p. 33 |
| Confessions of a Misspent Youth (Withnail and I) | p. 38 |
| The Blitz as a Lark (Hope and Glory) | p. 41 |
| Tough Skin (Au Revoir les Enfants) | p. 46 |
| Knowing and Being (Music Box) | p. 51 |
| Facing Vietnam | p. 57 |
| Kubrick and Vietnam (Full Metal Jacket) | p. 61 |
| Feeling the Heat (Hamburger Hill) | p. 66 |
| Protest Machismo (Born on the Fourth of July) | p. 69 |
| DePalma in Vietnam (Casualties of War) | p. 73 |
| Black and White | p. 85 |
| Trashing Black Culture, Part I: The Director as Superstar (The Cotton Club) | p. 89 |
| Trashing Black Culture, Part II: Steven Spielberg Directs a Disney Picture (The Color Purple) | p. 94 |
| Trashing Black Culture, Part III: Genteel Fakery (Cry Freedom) | p. 100 |
| Portrait of the Liberal as a Young Woman (A World Apart) | p. 103 |
| The Fighting 54th (Glory) | p. 107 |
| Letting the Real World In | p. 113 |
| The Power of Despair (Pixote) | p. 115 |
| Rich Man's Spiritual (Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done) | p. 117 |
| A Jury of One's Peers (A Cry in the Dark) | p. 121 |
| Con Job (Roger and Me) | p. 125 |
| Sex in the New Puritan Age | p. 129 |
| Another Country (My Beautiful Laundrette) | p. 133 |
| Sexual Bohemia (Menage) | p. 138 |
| The Old In-Out (Rita, Sue and Bob Too) | p. 141 |
| David Leland's Fictions (Mona Lisa, Personal Services, Wish You Were Here) | p. 145 |
| Upholding the Law of Desire (Dark Habits, What Have I Done to Deserve This!, Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) | p. 156 |
| Hunger (Enemies, A Love Story) | p. 168 |
| Glorious Compromise | p. 173 |
| The Unembarrassed Camera (Personal Best) | p. 177 |
| Hail Compromise! (Bull Durham) | p. 182 |
| Chet's Blues (Let's Get Lost) | p. 187 |
| Riffing on the Downbeat (Drugstore Cowboy) | p. 190 |
| Slumming on the Road to Romance (The Fabulous Baker Boys) | p. 195 |
| Actor/Director (My Left Foot) | p. 200 |
| Duet (Driving Miss Daisy) | p. 203 |
| The Emperor's New Clothes | p. 207 |
| The Consequences of Inflation (Amadeus) | p. 209 |
| Precursors (Out of Africa) | p. 214 |
| Art-House Visions | p. 221 |
| The Godfather as a Comedy of Menace (The Long Good Friday) | p. 225 |
| Goodbye to Cruelty (The Eyes, the Mouth) | p. 227 |
| American Tales (True Stories) | p. 230 |
| Removing the Obstacles Between Audience and Character (Hour of the Star) | p. 234 |
| Decorum (The Funeral) | p. 237 |
| Mood Piece (Housekeeping) | p. 240 |
| Film and Theater (Melo) | p. 244 |
| Children's Gothic (Alice) | p. 248 |
| Barbie and Kens (Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) | p. 251 |
| Brecht and Freud (The Singing Detective) | p. 253 |
| Entertainments | p. 263 |
| Rockin' Out (Stop Making Sense) | p. 267 |
| A New Sensibility (Lost in America) | p. 270 |
| Coming Up Roses (The Purple Rose of Cairo) | p. 274 |
| Clair de Lune (Moonstruck) | p. 279 |
| Summer Vacation (High Season) | p. 282 |
| Directors | p. 287 |
| Lear Without Tears (Ran) | p. 293 |
| Mini-Jokes (Mystery Train) | p. 298 |
| Serving the Text (The Dead) | p. 301 |
| The Epic Impulse (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) | p. 308 |
| For Reel (Tanner '88) | p. 317 |
| How the Other Half Lives (Blue Velvet, Something Wild) | p. 321 |
| Woman's Legacy (High Tide) | p. 332 |
| Swing Shift: A Tale of Hollywood | p. 341 |
| Contrasts | p. 355 |
| A Selective Filmography | p. 363 |
| Index | p. 373 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |