pt. I: Film production, distribution and exhibition -- Film production, distribution, and exhibition -- Mechanics of the movies -- Bringing a film to the spectator -- Box: Independent production and mainstream Hollywood: The case of good machine -- Making the movie: film production -- Modes of production -- pt. 2: Film form -- The significance of film form -- The concept of form in film -- Principles of film form -- Narrative as a formal system -- Principles of narrative construction -- Box: Playing games with story time -- Narration: the flow of story information -- The classical Hollywood cinema -- Narrative form in Citizen Kane -- pt. 3: Types of film -- Film genres -- Understanding genre -- Box: A contemporary genre: the crime thriller -- Three genres -- Documentary, experimental, and animated films -- pt. 4: Film style -- The shot: mise-en-scene -- What is mise-en-scene? -- Realism -- The power of mise-en-scene -- Aspects of mise-en-scene -- Box: The film actor's tool kit -- Mise-en-scene in space and time -- Narrative functions of mise-en-scene: Our hospitality -- The shot: cinematography -- The photographic image -- Box: From monsters to the mundane: computer-generated imagery in The Lord of the Rings -- Framing -- Duration of the image: the long take -- The relation of shot to shot: editing -- What editing is -- Dimensions of film editing -- Continuity editing -- Box: Intensified continuity: L.A. Confidential and contemporary editing -- Alternatives to continuity editing -- Sound in the cinema -- The powers of sound -- Fundamentals of film sound -- Dimensions of film sound -- Box: Rhythm on two tracks: a dance of death in The last of the Mohicans -- Functions of film sound: A man escaped -- Style as a formal system -- The concept of style -- Analyzing film style -- Style in Citizen Kane -- Style in gap-toothed women -- Style in The river -- Style in Ballet Mécanique -- Style in A movie -- pt. 5: Critical analysis of films -- 11. Film criticism: sample analyses -- The classical narrative cinema -- Narrative alternatives to classical filmmaking -- Documentary form and style -- Form, style and ideology -- pt. 6: Film history -- Film form and film history -- Early cinema (1893-1903) -- The development of the classical Hollywood cinema (1908-1927) -- German Expressionism (1919-1926) -- French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930) -- Soviet Montage (1924-1930) -- The classical Hollywood cinema after the coming of sound -- Italian Neorealism (1942-1951) -- The French new wave (1959-1964) -- The new Hollywood and independent filmmaking -- Contemporary Hong Kong cinema.