Product Description

Examines the many forms of cinematic badness over the past one hundred years, from Nosferatu to The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2504397 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"What is most intellectually engaging for me is the book's savvy reluctance to attribute 'badness' to any single phenomenon, source, cause, or field of inquiry--for example, malevolence is a matter of ideology, but it is also always' something else. 'The book is rich and complex while remaining accessible to a variety of audiences, and it will make a valuable addition to the field of cinema studies."

From the Back Cover
Violence and corruption sell big, especially since the birth of action cinema, but even from cinema's earliest days, the public has been delighted to be stunned by screen representations of negativity in all its forms-evil, monstrosity, corruption, ugliness, villainy, and darkness. Bad examines the long line of thieves, rapists, varmints, codgers, dodgers, manipulators, exploiters, conmen, killers, vamps, liars, demons, cold-blooded megalomaniacs, and warmhearted flakes that populate cinematic narrative. From Nosferatu to The Talented Mr. Ripley, the contributors consider a wide range of genres and use a variety of critical approaches to examine evil, villainy, and immorality in twentieth-century film.

About the Author
Murray Pomerance is Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University. He is the editor of Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the Twentieth Century, also published by SUNY Press, and Enfant Terrible!: Jerry Lewis in American Film.