First edition published 1974. Editors : Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen.
Other editions published 1979, 1985, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Film Language.
Vsevolod Podovkin : From Film Technique [On Editing] --
Sergei Eisenstein : From Film Form : Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram]; The Dramaturgy of Film Form [The Dialectical Approach to Film Form] --
Andr'e Bazin: From What Is Cinema? : The Evolution of the Language of Cinema --
Brian Henderson : Toward a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style -- Christian Metz : From Film Language : Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema ; Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film --
Gilbert Harman : Semiotics and the Cinema: Metz and Wollen --
Stephen Prince : The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies --
Daniel Dayan : The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema --
William Rothman : Against "The System of the Suture" --
Kaja Silverman : From The Subject of Semiotics [On Suture] --
Nick Browne : The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach.

II. Film and Reality.
Siegfried Kracauer : From Theory of Film : Basic Concepts --
Siegfried Kracauer : From From Caligari to Hitler ; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari --
Anrd'e Bazin : From What is Cinema? : The Ontology of the Photographic Image ; The Myth of Total Cinema ; De Sica: Metteur-en-sc`ene --
Rudolf Arnheim : From Film as Art :The Complete Film --
Maya Deren : Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality --
Stan Brakhage : From Metaphors on Vision --
Robert Stam and Louise Spence : Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction --
Christine Gledhill : Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism.

III. The Film Medium: Image and Sound.
Erwin Panofsky : Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures --
Siegfried Kracauer : From Theory of Film : The Establishment of Physical Existence --
Bela Balasz From Theory of the Film : The Close-up ; The Face of Man --
Rudolf Arnheim : From Film as Art : Film and Reality ; The Making of a Film --
Noel Carroll : From Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory : The Specificity Thesis --
Gerald Mast : From Film/Cinema/Movie :
Projection --
Stanley Cavell : From The World Viewed : Photograph and Screen ; Audience, Actor, and Star ; Types; Cycles as Genres ; Ideas of Origin --
Jean-Louis Baudry : Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus --
Christian Metz : Aural Objects --
Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevelod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov : Statement on Sound --
Mary Ann Doane : The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space --
John Belton : Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound --
John Ellis : From Visible Fictions : Broadcast TV as Sound and Image.

IV. Film Narrative and Other Arts.
Hugo Munsterberg : From The Film: A Psychological Study :
The Means of the Photoplay --
Andre Bazin : From What is Cinema? : Theater and Cinema --
Leo Braudy : From The World in a Frame : Acting: Stage vs. Screen --
Sergei Eisenstein : From Dickens, Griffith and Ourselves [Dickens, Griffith, and Film Today] --
Seymour Chatman : What Novels Can Do That Films Can't (and Vice Versa) --
Dudley Andrew : From Concepts in Film Theory : Adaptation --
Tom Gunning : Narrative Discourse and the Narrator System --
Seymour Chatman : From Coming to Terms : The Cinematic Narrator --
Kristin Thompson : The Concept of Cinematic Excess --
Peter Wollen : Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est.

V. The Film Artist.
Andrew Sarris Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962 --
Peter Wollen : From Signs and Meaning in the Cinema : The Auteur Theory --
Roland Barthes The Face of Garbo --
John Ellis From Visible Fictions : Stars as Cinematic Phenomenon --
Robert C. Allen From Film History: Theory and Practice :
The Role of the Star in Film History [Joan Crawford] --
Molly Hasekll : From From Reverence to Rape : Female Stars of the 1940s --
Joan Mellen : From Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film : The Mae West Nobody Knows --
Miriam Hansen Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification : Valentino and Female Spectatorship --
Thomas Schatz : From The Genius of the System :"The Whole Equation of Pictures."

VI. Film Genres.
Leo Braudy : From The World in a Frame : Genre: The Conventions of Connection --
Rick Altman : A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre --
Thomas Schatz : From Hollywood Genres : Film Genre and the Genre Film --
Robert Warshow : Movie Chronicle: The Westerner --
Robin Wood : Ideology, Genre, Auteur --
Bruce Kawin : The Mummy's Pool --
Tania Modleski : The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory --
Linda Williams : Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess --
David Bordwell : The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.

VII. Film: Psychology, Society, and Ideology.
Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction --
Jean-Luk Comolli and Jean Narbomi : Cinema/Ideology/Criticism --
Jean-Louis Baudry : The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema --
Noel Carroll : From Mystifying Movies : Jean-Louis Baudry and "The Apparatus" --
Parker Tyler From Magic and Myth of the Movies : Preface --
Christian Metz : From The Imaginary Signifier : Identification, Mirror ; The Passion for Perceiving ; Disavowal, Fetishism --
Tom Gunning : An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator --
Laura Mulvey : Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema --
Manthia Diawara : Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.