Corrections and Clarifications
On page 124, I write that the opening scene of The Crusades "uses a town square to introduce three sets of characters who do not yet know each other." However, many of the characters do know each other. Instead, the shot demonstrates convergence by showing characters who share the same space even though they have distinct goals and interests.
On page 148, I discuss an important shot in The Human Comedy, where Tom and Diana drive by a series of dancers celebrating in a park. I argue that the film contrasts the recognizable ethnicity of the dancers (verbally identified as Greeks, Mexicans, Armenians, Russians, and Swedes) with the non-specific white ethnicity of Tom and Diana. However, there is a nuance in the dialogue that I originally overlooked. Driving past the Greek dancers, Tom says, "That's the way they dance in the old country. I mean, that's the way they used to dance." Diana looks at him briefly and then turns away. As I read this passage, Tom has let it slip that he has Greek heritage; then he tries to cover up the admission before Diana can notice.
On page 272, my discussion of Tea and Sympathy contains the following remark in parentheses: "In the original play, the young man is gay." This statement is inaccurate. Joe McElhaney offers a better account of Robert Anderson's play, explaining that Tom's stigmatization "is clearly a type of homosexual panic and one that is most strongly expressed by the school's coach and Tom's housemaster, Bill Reynolds, himself clearly established in the play as a repressed homosexual. The coach's wife takes a liking to Tom and, in the play's final scene, seduces Tom as a way of proving to him that he is not gay." See Joe McElhaney, "Introduction," in Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment, ed. Joe McElhaney (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2009), 27, as well as David Gerstner's essays in the same volume.
In the same section, my analysis of Minnelli's film version considers a sequence of five shots. However, I should have noted that the fifth shot continues into the next scene, a long discussion between Laura and Bill.
On page 283 and afterward, I refer to the car in Touch of Evil's opening shot as a "Cadillac." My father assures me that it is a Chrysler.