Abstract
On the cusp of classical Hollywood cinema -- Breadlines and box office lines: Hollywood in the nadir of the Great Depression -- Preachment yarns: the politics of mere entertainment -- Dictators and Democrats: the rage for order -- Vice rewarded: the wages of cinematic sin -- Criminal codes: gangsters unbound, felons in custody -- Comic timing: cracking wise and wising up -- News on screen: the vividness of mechanical immortality -- Remote kinships; the geography of the expeditionary film -- Primitive mating rituals: the color wheel of the racial adventure film -- Nightmare pictures: the quality of gruesomeness -- Classical Hollywood cinema: the world according to Joseph J. Breen.