Tom Gunning is a Professor in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Film and Media at the University of Chicago, USA. He is the author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (1993), and of numerous articles on early cinema.

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Standing Outside the Films – EmblemsThe Inscribed/Imprinting HandThe Screening Room: 'Strange but True'The Interview and the ClockI. Reading the Text of Death – Lang's Silent Allegories: Der müde Tod (1921), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927)1. The Märchen: Der müde Tod – Death and the MaidenWho Tells the Timely Story of Death?The Allegory of the Maiden: Reading and DesireFinal Figure: The Look at the Camera2. The Decay of Myth: Siegfried's Death, Kriemhild 's Revenge3. Metropolis: The Dance of DeathThe Allegory of the MachineThe Universal Language of Silent FilmDemons of Energy: Who Rules the City of Metropolis?Gothic Modernism: Technology as Modern MagicOedipal Nightmares, Allegorical RiddlesApocalypse without End, Endings without ConvictionBurn Witch BurnII: The Mastery of Crime – Lang's Urban Thrillers: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler ( 1922), Spies ( 1928), The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932)4. Mabuse, Grand Enunciator: Control and Co-ordinationThe Sensation-film and the Spaces of ModernityThe Terrain of Modernity: Space, Time and the Mastery of CommunicationThe Mechanical Production of Counterfeit Identity The Grand Enunciator and the Power of the Gaze Playing with Time5. HaghiThe Evil Genius/Mauvais génieThe Staging of DesireBuilding Identity from FragmentsFinale: Bringing Down the House6. The Testament of Dr. MabuseA Message, Condemned to Death, Has Escaped'Pay No Attention to that Man behind the Curtain'The Same Old Song, but with a Different Meaning(Since You've Been Gone)III: Hinge – M (1931)7. M: The City Haunted by Demonic Desire'Oh Mother I Am Lost!' The Murder of Elsie BeckmannFormed in Fright: The Topography of TerrorDer Schwarze MannThe People vs Hans BeckertIV: Fritz Lang's America – The Social Trilogy: Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), You and Me (1938)8. You Ought to Be in Pictures: Liliom and FuryThe Flight of the RefugeeMeet John Doe: Lang Arrives in AmericaA Whole Town of John Does: The Lynching of Joe Wilson'You Can Have the Strand in Your Own Town': Joe Wilson's Private Theatre9. You Only Live OnceThe Paradoxes of VisionIdentities Assembled and Expunged in a Carceral SocietyThe Re-educating of Joan Graham Taylor10. You and MeA 'Cinematic Hash': Experimental Cross-breeding among the Hollywood GenresYou Can Not Get Something for NothingV: Framing Desire: The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), The Secret Beyond the Door (1948), House by the River (1950)11. The Woman in the Window: Cycles of Desire Prelude to Nightmare: Shop Window Sweetheart The Paranoid World Made of GlassEternal Return12. Scarlet Street: Life Is a Nightmare Mirror ImagesThe Fourteen-Carat, Seventeen-Jewel CashierThe Artist's Signature and the Mourning Play of the Melancholy BabyNo Perspective: The Cancelling Out of Chris Cross13. Secret Beyond the Door: Broken Frames and Piercing Gazes Pastiche and PalimpsestSpeaking and Seeing: A Woman's View and VoiceUnlocking Bluebeard's Seventh RoomArchitecture of Doom14. Coda: House by the RiverEffacing the Traces and Writing the AbjectThe Flow of the Writer's HandVI: The 50s Exposés and Lang's Last Testament: The Blue Gardenia (1953), The Big Heat (1953), While the City Sleeps (1955), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt ( 1956), The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960)15. The Blue Gardenia Contradictions of a Decade Off the HookBooking Cinderella16. The Big HeatCircuits of CorruptionThe Construction of AuthorityRogue CopThe Big Heat Falls Alike on the Just and the Unjust17. While the City Sleeps/Beyond a Reasonable DoubtThe News is Made at Night Television, Person to Person Inside Out18. The Circle Closes on the Last Mabuse Return to the Scene of the CrimeRecycled Vision, Feigned Blindness, Total ExposureThe Slte of Remembering and Forgetting in Late Modernity The Death of Cinema, Cinema and DeathNotesBibliographyIndex