Melvyn Stokes is Professor of Film History, and Director of the AHRC-funded 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s' research project at University College London, UK. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton, a Fulbright Exchange Professor at Mount Holyoke College and a Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris He has written and edited twelve books, including D.W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation': A History of 'the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time' (2007). He is currently President of SERCIA, the European film organisation. Richard Maltby is Professor of Screen Studies and Head of Humanities at Flinders University, Australia.

• Introduction historical Hollywood spectatorship, Melvyn Stokes.- Part One Talking pictures the reception of Hollywood: writing the history of American film reception, Janet Staiger.- genre and audience genre classifications and cultural distinctions in the mediation of 'The Silence of the Lambs', Mark Jancovich.- interpreting 'All About Eve' a study in historical reception, Martin Shingler.- the fall and rise of 'Fantasia', Amy M. Davis.- changing perceptions of the movies American catholics debate film censorship, Gregory D. Black.- historical spectatorship around and about Stanley Kramer's 'On the Beach', G. Tom Poe. Part Two The spectator reviewed: 'Green Like Me', Jane Gaines.- the sonic playground Hollywood cinema and its listeners, Gianluca Sergi.- the contemporary cinephile film collecting in the post-video era, Barbara Klinger.- virtual Hollywood and the geneology of its hyper-spectator, Alain J.J. Cohen.