Book Reviews
2005; Wiley; Volume: 38; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.0022-3840.2005.130_6.x
ISSN1540-5931
Autores ResumoDreams & Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film . Jack Shadoian. New York : Oxford University Press , 2003 . We can now read the second edition (the subtitle has been changed from the 1977 edition's The American Gangster/Crime Film) of one of the first book-length studies of the gangster movie. This reflects the burgeoning interest in genre studies and structuralism that arose in part to counter the auteur-dominated criticism of the 1960s. It fast became a standard reference work in the field. This original study, reprinted virtually unchanged here as Chapters 1–6, analyzes the American gangster film from its sound beginnings (Little Caesar, 1930, and Public Enemy, 1931) to the 1960s (represented by Bonnie and Clyde and Point Blank, 1967) and the 1970s (by the first two films in the Godfather trilogy, 1972, 1975). Many of the eighteen films that Shadoian discusses received their first sustained critical notice here. Little has changed apart from a new subtitle and a transitional phrase or two. The bibliography is updated (the latest reference is from 1999) with additional material reflecting recent or continuing topics of theoretical interest: film noir, feminism, cultural studies, and genre theory. However, Shadoian's original readings stand substantially intact. He has added new material, though, with a new two-part introduction revalidating the texts chosen for his original study, and then by drawing lines of descent from the classical gangster film through to the present. In a new Chapter 7 and in Appendix 1, he offers close readings of two more recent gangster films—Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995)—and redirects critical attention to Criss Cross (1949). Things to Do was a new find for me, and Shadoian's thoroughly satisfying discussion of it gives gravity to a film—indeed, to a genre—that may strike some viewers as distinctly over the top. More important, his reading substantiates the argument that he builds for post-Godfather generic revisions with regard to exaggerated violence and profanity, an increased luridness of subject matter, sophistication of cinematic technology, and cross-fertilization from other genres, including horror. Also interesting is the treatment of the new discontinuous storytelling modes that replace the classical narrative trajectories of the earlier gangster texts. The value of Shadoian's study is not so much its thesis of the conflicted gangster who is emblematic of a society of conflicted principles. This idea, which is not limited to the gangster film, derives from Robert Warshow's pivotal “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” and is the basis for the imagery of Shadoian's title. However, as he notes, “dreams and dead ends” also applies to the necessity of the genre adapting its aesthetic conventions to reflect social change, which his study illuminates. This book's strength is the insight and warmth of his methodologically eclectic readings of the twenty-one films discussed in this new edition. His writing is clear and forceful, yet unpretentious. “I've been tinkering with Criss Cross since 1975 or so,” he admits at one point (321). His enthusiasm for the subject matter even extends to his construction of three appendicized amazon.com-like lists of recommended films. His apt use of mise-en-scéne and other formalistic analyses is always justified by the dramatic content of the films under question. The organization is unassuming, but logical and functional. Prior to an in-depth discussion of films representing the period, he discusses the period itself. Shadoian notes how socioeconomic and political climates affected the films' developing iconography, their increasing self-consciousness, and the alterations in emphases of their narrative formulae. In short, this book accounts passionately and convincingly for the development and currency of the American gangster film.
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