| Acknowledgments | |
| 1 | Introduction: Motherhood and Film: A Critical Genealogy | 3 |
| 2 | The Trick Film: The Lady Vanishes: Women, Magic, and the Movies | 37 |
| 3 | Silent Melodrama: Way Down East: Melodrama, Metaphor, and the Maternal Body | 56 |
| 4 | The Horror Film: Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in Rosemary's Baby | 73 |
| 5 | The Crime Film: Mama's Boy: Filial Hysteria in White Heat | 92 |
| 6 | Film Comedy: "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child": Comedy and Matricide | 111 |
| 7 | The Thriller: The Hand That Shocks the Cradle: The Maternal Thriller | 131 |
| 8 | The Postmodern Film: Postmodernity and Postmaternity: High Heels and Imitation of Life | 162 |
| 9 | The Nonfiction Film: "The Reproduction of Mothering": Documenting the Mother-Daughter Bond | 179 |
| 10 | Epilogue: Maternity and the Artist: "A Remarkable Zoological Species" | 214 |
| Index | 231 |
