Robert Kolker is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Maryland and Adjunct Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of numerous works on film and media, including The Altering Eye; Film, Form, and Culture; and Media Studies: An Introductory Textbook.

"An excellent work of film criticism, and as such, demands response and debate....Kolker's analyses of each director's work...are stimulating, provocative, insightful and passionate, models of film analysis."--San Francisco Review of Books"Brings the films into clearer focus for film-goers. The filmmakers themselves will find Kolker's analysis of their works extremely accurate."--Martin Scorsese"The best book on contemporary American film ."--The Washington Post Book World

• Preface to First Edition ; Preface to Fourth Editoin ; Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter One Body's Montage, History's Mise-en-Scene, Contours of the Horizontal Line ; Chapter Two Tectonics of the Mechanical Man ; Chapter Three Expressions of the Streets ; Chapter Four Steven Spielberg, War, Superheroes, and the Digital Mise-en-Scene ; Chapter Five Radical Surfaces and Independent Means