Read complete books and articles on: Film Noir

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Film Noir

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective » Read Now
by Jon Tuska. 305 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...CINEMA -ii- DARK CINEMA American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective JON...and criticism. I. Title. II. Title: Film noir in cultural perspective. III. Series...125 5. The...
2.

Shades of Noir: A Reader » Read Now
by Joan Copjec. 300 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...JOAN COPJEC ix 1 Film Noir on the Edge of Doom MARC VERNET...JANET BERGSTROM 97 5 Film Noir and Women ELIZABETH COWIE 121...Phenomenal Nonphenomenal: Private Space in Film...
3.

Noir, Now and Then: Film Noir Originals and Remakes, (1944-1999) » Read Now
by Ronald Schwartz. 215 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This examination of the cinematic style of film noir originals and their neo-noir remakes compares thirty-five films, beginning with Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity and concluding with Jim McBrides's Breathless. In-depth analyses of the films explain the qualities and characteristics of film...
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This examination of the cinematic style of film noir originals and their neo-noir remakes compares thirty-five films, beginning with Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity and concluding with Jim McBrides's Breathless. In-depth analyses of the films explain the qualities and characteristics of film noir, while providing critical readings of both the originals and the remakes. As this study reveals, the noir style significantly impacted American film and neo-noir remakes attest to its continued popularity in cinematic art.
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4.

Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism » Read Now
by Paula Rabinowitz. 299 pgs.

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Black & White & Noir explores America's pulp modernism through penetrating readings of the noir sensibility lurking in an eclectic array of media: Office of War Information photography, women's experimental films, and African-American novels, among others. It traces the dark edges of cultural...
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Black & White & Noir explores America's pulp modernism through penetrating readings of the noir sensibility lurking in an eclectic array of media: Office of War Information photography, women's experimental films, and African-American novels, among others. It traces the dark edges of cultural detritus blowing across the postwar landscape, finding in pulp a political theory that helps explain America's fascination with lurid spectacles of crime. We are accustomed to thinking of noir as a film form popularized in movies like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and, more recently, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. But it is also, Paula Rabinowitz argues, an avenue of social and political expression. This book offers an unparalleled historical and theoretical overview of the noir shadows cast when the media's glare is focused on the unseen and the unseemly in our culture. Through far-ranging discussions of the Starr Report, movies such as Double Indemnity and The Big Heat, and figures as various as Barbara Stanwyck, Kenneth Fearing, and Richard Wright, Rabinowitz finds in film noir the representation of modern America's attempt to submerge and mask its violent history of racial and class anatagonisms. Black & White & Noir also explores the theory and practice of stilettos, the ways in which girls in the 1950s viewed film noir as a secret language about their mothers' pasts, the extraordinary tone-setting photographs of Esther Bubley, and the smutty aspect of social workers' case studies, among other unexpected twists and provocative turns.
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5.

Class, Crime, and Film Noir: Labor, the Fugitive Outsider, and the Anti-Authoritarian Tradition, in Social Justice » Read Now
by Dennis Broe. 20 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Class, Crime, and Film Noir: Labor, the Fugitive Outsider, and the...characters, are most often referred to as film noir. They come directly out of a period of...second...
6.

The Whiteness of Film Noir, in American Literary History » Read Now
by Eric Lott. 25 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...The Whiteness of Film Noir Eric Lott In the final moments of...whiteness, which indexes his pristine soul. Film noir -- "black film," as French critics first...of light...
7.

Film Noir and the Racial Unconscious, in Screen » Read Now
by Julian Murphet. 14 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

...Film noir and the racial unconscious JULIAN MURPHET The critical and industrial longevity of film noir as a cinematic category arguably rests...US cultural product. 1 In...
8.

Genre Theory in the Context of the Noir and Post-Noir Film, in Film Criticism » Read Now
by Christopher Orr. 17 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...the context of the noir and post-noir film by Christopher Orr...1940s and 1950s that became known as film noir as well as to a body of later films...and fear. Thus when...
9.

Handbook of American Film Genres (Chap. 5 "Film Noir") » Read Now
by Wes D. Gehring. 412 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"More genres, 19 in fact, are discussed than in other standard works. The 14 genres considered here by film scholar contributors other than Gehring include the adventure film, the western, the gangster film, film noir, the WW II combat film, the horror film, science fiction, fantasy, the musical...
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"More genres, 19 in fact, are discussed than in other standard works. The 14 genres considered here by film scholar contributors other than Gehring include the adventure film, the western, the gangster film, film noir, the WW II combat film, the horror film, science fiction, fantasy, the musical, melodrama, the social problem film, the biographical film, and the art film. The discussion of fine comedy genres by Gehring himself is far more extensive than in other genre studies, embracing screwball comedy, populist comedy, parody, black humor, and clown comedy. . . . Recommended for both undergraduate and graduate collections." Choice
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10.

You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film: History & Memory, 1927-1949 ("The Film Noire" begins on p. 104) » Read Now
by Andrew Sarris. 573 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Andrew Sarris has long been one of America's most celebrated writers on film, author of the seminal work The American Cinema, and for decades a highly regarded critic, first for The Village Voice and more recently for The New York Observer. Now comes Sarris's definitive statement on film, in a...
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Andrew Sarris has long been one of America's most celebrated writers on film, author of the seminal work The American Cinema, and for decades a highly regarded critic, first for The Village Voice and more recently for The New York Observer. Now comes Sarris's definitive statement on film, in a masterwork that has taken 25 years to complete. Here is a sweeping--and highly personal--history of American film, from the birth of the talkies (beginning with The Jazz Singer and Al Jolson's memorable line "You ain't heard nothin' yet") to the decline of the studio system. By far the largest section of the book celebrates the work of the great American film directors, with giants such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks examined film by film. Sarris also offers glowing portraits of major stars, from Garbo and Bogart to Ingrid Bergman, Margaret Sullavan, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. There is a tour of the studios--Metro, Paramount, RKO, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal--revealing how each left its own particular stamp on film. And in perhaps the most interesting and original section, we are treated to an informative look at film genres--the musical, the screwball comedy, the horror picture, the gangster film, and the western. A lifetime of watching and thinking about cinema has gone into this book. It is the history that film buffs have been waiting for.
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11.

Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society ("Film Noir, ca. 1940-1955" begins on p. 23) » Read Now
by Nicole Rafter. 210 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Movies play a central role in shaping our understanding of crime and the world generally, helping us define what is good and bad, desirable and unworthy, lawful and illicit, strong and weak. Crime films raise controversial issues about the distribution of social power and the meanings of deviance...
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Movies play a central role in shaping our understanding of crime and the world generally, helping us define what is good and bad, desirable and unworthy, lawful and illicit, strong and weak. Crime films raise controversial issues about the distribution of social power and the meanings of deviance, and they provide a safe space for fantasies of rebellion, punishment, and the restoration of order. In this, the first comprehensive study of its kind, well-known criminologist Nicole Rafter examines the relationship between society and crime films from the perspectives of criminal justice, film history and technique, and sociology. Dealing with over 300 films ranging from gangster and cop to trial and prison movies, Shots in the Mirror concentrates on works in the Hollywood tradition but also identifies a darker strain of critical films that portray crime and punishment more bleakly.
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12.

Women's Film and Female Experience, 1940-1950 ("In Suspicion and Distrust: The Women's Movie Encounters the Film Noir" begins on p. 168) » Read Now
by Andrea S. Walsh. 260 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...The Womens Movie Encounters the Film Noir 168 A Diffuse Distrust...shadowy lighting as in the 1940s film noir . Cultural analysts who fail to recognize...styles mainstream...
13.

Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Part 1 "Film Noir and the Political Economy of Cold War Masculinity") » Read Now
by Robert J. Corber. 246 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on...
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Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of the Second World War.
By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze". He emphasizes how film noir's introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression.
Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers, including students and scholars in the fields of American literature, film, and gaystudies.
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14.

Cain, Naturalism, and Noir, in Film Criticism » Read Now
by Christopher Orr. 18 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Christopher Orr Most commentators on film noir trace the literary antecedents of...concern of this paper is to examine film noir and hard-boiled fiction as an...
15.

American Film and Society Since 1945 (Discussion of film noir begins on p. 25) » Read Now
by Leonard Quart, Albert Auster. 193 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...films ranging from Abraham Polonsky Marxist film noir Force of Evil 1948 through Stanley Kubricks...these elements as a genre, which they dubbed "film noir." 20 Many of...
16.

Film Gris: Crime, Critique and Cold War Culture in 1951, in Film Criticism » Read Now
by Charles J. Maland. 31 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...these films from the contemporaneous film noir, Anderson wrote that film gris was...psychological and social realism" than film noir (183). Anderson suggests that...