After a lengthy period of neglect, there are signs of a significant revival of interest in the topic of genre and Hollywood. While this book has been in press, Rick Altman has published Film/Genre (1999), James Naremore has published More Than Night (1998), and Jonathan Munby has published Public Enemies, Public Heroes (1999). Altman explores a number of innovative ideas about genre in general. Naremore and Munby offer revisionist accounts of film noir and the gangster film respectively. All three take advantage of archival resources that were simply unavailable to those who pioneered the study of genre and genres in the 1960s and 1970s. And all three take on board some of the theoretical and ideological agendas that have been set since then. They show that genre remains as important and productive a means of thinking about Hollywood, its history, its audiences and its films as its pioneers and initial proponents always claimed. But because they each present new research and new thinking, they also help make the point that a fresh assessment of its strengths and weaknesses is long overdue.