This book examines the treatment of space and narrative in a selection of classic films including , , and . Deborah Thomas employs a variety of arguments in exploring the reading of space and its meaning in Hollywood cinema and film generally. Topics covered include the importance of space in defining genre (such as the necessity of an urban landscape for a gangster film to be a gangster film); the ambiguity of offscreen space and spectatorship (how an audience reads an unseen but inferred setting), and the use of spatially disruptive cinematic techniques such as flashback to construct meaning.