Contents -- Introduction: Cinema Spectatorship and Public Life -- I Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: The Emergence of Spectatorship -- 1 A Cinema in Search of a Spectator: Film-Viewer Relations before Hollywood -- 2 Early Audiences: Myths and Models -- 3 Chameleon and Catalyst: The Cinema as an Alternative Public Sphere -- II Babel in Babylon: D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) -- 4 Reception, Textual System, and Self-Definition -- 5 "A Radiant Crazy-Quilt": Patterns of Narration and Address -- 6 Genesis, Causes, Concepts of History -- 7 Film History, Archaeology, Universal Language -- 8 Hieroglyphics, Figurations of Writing -- 9 Riddles of Maternity -- 10 Crisis of Femininity, Fantasies of Rescue -- III The Return of Babylon: Rudolph Valentino and Female Spectatorship (1921-1926) -- 11 Male Star, Female Fans -- 12 Patterns of Vision, Scenarios of Identification -- Notes -- Illustration Credits -- Index.