Introduction -- From scaffold to cinema : violence as a force of subjection and subjectivation -- Violence and clinical authority in "the aetiology of hysteria" and The cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- Violence and the passage from responsibility to desire in The sheik -- The death of popular sovereignty in Once upon a time in the west -- Deliverance and its uses : subjectivity, violence and nervous laughter -- Conclusion : gender and pervasive violence