Copjec,
Joan (ed), Shades of Noir: A Reader (Verso Books, 1993). Editorial
review from the Library Journal (quoted amazon.com): ‘The
essays in this volume examine the widely studied and discussed genre
from a variety of perspectives, not always agreeing on exactly what
constitutes film noir or which movies exemplify its elements. Beyond
such acknowledged classics as Double Indemnity (1944), one
contributor sees noir elements in recent black-oriented films such as
A Rage in Harlem (1991), while another attempts to explain
the noir significance of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The more
interesting selections here include an essay on female characters and
one on the making of Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953).’
Crimeculture.com: as the Library Review says, perhaps
not really suitable as a general introduction to film noir, but several
valuable essays here.
Doane,
Mary Ann, Femmes Fatales (Routledge, 1991). Synopsis:
‘A major work of feminist film criticism examining questions of
sexual difference, the female body and the female spectator through
a discussion of such figures as Pabst's Lulu and Rita Hayworth's Gilda.’
Haut,
Woody, Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood
(Serpent's Tail, 2002). Amazon synopsis: ‘Behind some
of the silver screen's greatest films - from classics such as "Double
Indemnity", "The Big Sleep", "The Maltese Falcon",
and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" to contemporary films
such as "L.A. Confidential" and "Jackie Brown" -
are great writers and crime novelists. How did these writers come to
write for the Hollywood dream machine? What effect did this have on
their work? were they happy with the results? These are just some of
the questions which the author addresses. This text looks at the fate
of crime writers in the Hollywood dream machine. It includes interviews
with James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Edward Bunker, amongst others,
and uncovers the increasing influence that film is having on writers
and writing and blends anecdote, analysis along and original interviews.’
Hirsch,
Foster, Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir (Limelight
Editions, 1999). ‘One of Hirsch’s strategies is to lay out
the template of classic noir and then apply it to neo-noir. In the chapter
"The Wounds of Desire," he traces the femme fatale from Stanwyck’s
enameled vixen in Double Indemnity to Kathleen Turner’s
sensual double-crosser in Body Heat to Lena Olin’s hitwoman
in Romeo Is Bleeding…In "Beyond Noir: The Roads
to Ruin," the author is provocative in examining the connections
between film noir and horror movies, corralling such examples as de
Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Robert Rodriguez’s
From Dusk Til Dawn…Other chapters thoroughly discuss
the "French connection" to noir, the "boys in the back
room" whose pulp writings fueled the genre, motifs such as the
"innocent" man drawn into a vortex of crime or the hardened
criminal whose pursuit of crime becomes the film’s worldview,
and in a surprising touch, the ‘70s blaxploitation film and later
manifestations of the urban black experience such as Boyz N the
Hood and Juice. Hirsch’s persuasiveness in mapping
the most far-flung regions of noir and neo-noir makes this book an essential
addition to the cineaste’s shelf.’ (reviewed online by Gary
Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/26/br_detours.html)
Hirsch,
Foster, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (Da Capo Press,
2001). Editorial review from amazon.com: ‘The classic
study of the most menacing and original genre of American cinema. A
backlist best seller and the definitive take on one of today's reigning
screen influences, film noir, this is an essential guide to the extraordinary
genre that launched the careers of such luminaries as Burt Lancaster,
Billy Wilder, Joan Crawford, Orson Welles, and Stanley Kubrick.’
Kaplan,
E. Ann (ed), Women in Film Noir (British Film Inst, 1999, revised
edn). Editorial review from Library Journal (quoted amazon.com):
‘Film noir flourished in the years during and immediately following
World War II, but the genre has never disappeared, as shown by the recent
popularity of films like Basic Instinct, Bound, and
LA Confidential. These academic essays...ponder the "absent
family" in noir, the role of woman as destroyer and redeemer, the
common theme of female duplicity, and the role of women in the narrative
structure. Other films considered here are Blue Gardenia, Gilda,
Double Indemnity, modern noir films like Klute, and
the horror classic The Haunting, which one critic sees as a
representation of the "disruptive force of lesbian desire."’
Crimeculture.com: the Library Journal complains that
this is not a book likely to appeal to a popular audience, but academic
readers are probably more likely to regard this seriousness of purpose
as a strength, and Kaplan’s collection of essays is widely regarded
as one of the major texts of feminist film criticism.
Krutnik,
Frank, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (Routledge,
1991). Synopsis: ‘Taking issue with many orthodox views
of "film noir", this study argues for a reorientation of this
compulsively engaging area of Hollywood cultural production. The author
recasts the films within a generic framework and draws on recent historical
and theoretical research to examine both the diversity of film noir
and its significance within American popular culture of the 1940s. He
considers "classical" Hollywood cinema, debates on genre and
the history of the emergence of character in film noir, focusing on
the "hard-boiled" crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler and James M.Cain as well as the popularization of Freudian
psychoanalysis and the social and cultural upheavals of the 1940s. The
core of this book, however, concerns the complex representation of masculinity
in the "tough" thriller, and where and how gender interlocks
with questions of genre. It analyzes in detail major thrillers like
The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Out of the
Past and The Killers, alongside lesser-known but nonetheless
important films.’
Munby,
Jonathan, Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster
from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil (University of Chicago Press,
1999). Synopsis: ‘In this study of Hollywood gangster
films, Jonathan Munby examines their controversial content and how it
was subjected to continual moral and political censure. Beginning in
the early 1930s, these films told compelling stories about ethnic urban
lower-class desires to "make it" in an America dominated by
Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideals and devastated by the Great Depression.
By the late 1940s, however, their focus shifted to the problems of a
culture maladjusting to a new peacetime sociopolitical order governed
by corporate capitalism. The gangster no longer challenged the establishment;
the issue was not "making it," but simply "making do."
Combining
film analysis with archival material from the Production Code Administration
(Hollywood's self-censoring authority), Munby shows how the industry
circumvented censure, and how its altered gangsters (influenced by European
filmmakers) fueled the infamous inquisitions of Hollywood in the postwar
'40s and '50s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Ultimately,
this provocative study suggests that we rethink our ideas about crime
and violence in depictions of Americans fighting against the status
quo.’
Murphy, Robert, British Film Noir: Shadows Are My Friend (I
B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001). No review available, but the book Murphy
co-authored with Steve Chibnall - British Crime Cinema - is
excellent.
Naremore,
James, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (University
of California Press, 1998). Synopsis: ‘"Film noir"
evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black and white movies from the
1940s and 1950s. This text discusses these pictures and the central
term of film noir claiming it is more complex and paradoxical than we
realize. Films discussed include: Double Indemnity, The
Third Man, Out of the Past, and "neo noirs"
such as Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, and Devil in
a Blue Dress. The author discusses film noir as a term in criticism;
as an expression of artistic modernism; as a symptom of Hollywood censorship
and politics in the 1940s; as a market strategy; as an evolving style;
as a cinema about races and nationalities; and as an idea that circulates
across all the information technologies.’ Crimeculture.com:
One of the most important recent studies of noir, establishing persuasively
the value of noir as a critical category.
Neale, Stephen, Genre and Hollywood (Routledge, 2000, Sightlines).
Synopsis: ‘In this comprehensive introduction to the
study of genre, Steve Neale discusses all the major concepts, theories
and accounts of Hollywood and genre, as well as the key genres which
theorists have written about, from horror to the Western. Taking issue
with much genre theory, which has provided only a partial and misleading
account of Hollywood's output, Neale calls for broader and more flexible
conceptions of genre, for the nature and range of Hollywood's films
to be looked at in more detail, and for any assessment of the social
and cultural significance of Hollywood's genres to take account of industrial
factors. Insightful and provocative, Genre and Hollywood puts forward
new arguments about the importance of genre in understanding Hollywood
cinema.’
Phillips, Gene D., Creatures of
Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir (University
Press of Kentucky, 2000). See details with crime fiction entries.
Rabinowitz,
Paula, Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism
(Columbia University Press, 2002). Editorial review from amazon.com:
‘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.’
Rafter,
Nicole Hahn, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (Oxford
University Press, 2000). Editorial review from amazon.com:
‘In this 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.’
Silver,
Alain and James Ursini (eds), Film Noir Reader (Limelight Editions,
1996). Editorial review from Book News Inc (quoted amazon.com):
‘An anthology of 22 seminal and contemporary essays on the art
of noir in film, drawing together definitive studies and ruminations
on the philosophy and techniques that made movies like The Maltese
Falcon classics. The essays include the first English translation
of "Towards a Definition of Film Noir," by Borde and Chaumeton,
and Paul Shrader's "Notes on Film Noir." Other critical discussions
examine narrative structure, lighting, the evolution of the femme fatale,
and the neo-noir rebirth of the genre in films like Reservoir Dogs
and Gun Crazy. Lots and lots of black and white (of course)
photographs make this a film buff's dream collection.’
Silver, Alain and James Ursini (eds),
Film Noir: Reader 2 (Limelight Editions, 1999). Synopsis:
‘The seminal essays in this new volume are designed to complement
those of our earlier anthology and includes several pieces from the
1940s. Lloyd Shearer writes on noir in the New York Times more
than year before either Nino Frank or Jean-Pierre Chartier thought of
giving it a name. As the classic period wound down, Claude Chabrol writing
for Cahiers du Cinéma sustained the critical discussion
of film noir culminating with Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton's
book-length French-language study in 1955…Marc Vernet's 1983 article
redefines the thrust of French criticism Finally Dale Ewing, "Film
Noir: Style and Content," closes out Part One with a solid recapitulation
of critical writing that goes all the way back to Chartier and Frank.
Parts Two and Three…again put the noir phenomenon in closer focus
through Case Studies and review its evolution within and after the classic
period.’ The online synopsis lists the essays in Parts Two and
Three - including Robin Wood on The Big Heat and Kiss Me
Deadly, Robert Porfirio on the two adaptations of The Postman
Always Rings Twice, Elizabeth Ward reflects on the impact of Double
Indemnity and Alain Silver revisiting ‘the darker expectations
of landscape in Hitchcock’; Part Three ‘delves further into
the boundaries and influences of classic film noir as evidenced not
only by the on-going vitality of neo-noir as a genre in the U.S. and
throughout the world...Several all new essays consider noir's relationships
to other types of films and other types of art’ - e.g., science
fiction and noir, abstract expressionism and noir, and crime photography
and noir. (synopsis provided online at http://members.aol.com/alainsil/noir/noir2.htm)
Silver, Alain, James Ursini and Robert
Porfirio (eds), Film Noir Reader 3: Interviews With Filmmakers of
the Classic Noir Period (Limelight Editions, 2002). Synopsis:
Departing from the approach of its Film Noir Reader predecessors,
this third volume in the series assembles a collection of interviews
with film noir directors and a cinematographer, few of whom are alive
today. Interviewees include Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity
and Sunset Boulevard), Otto Preminger (Laura), Joseph
Lewis (Gun Crazy and The Big Combo), Curtis Bernhardt
(Possessed and A Stolen Life), Edward Dmytryk (Murder,
My Sweet and Crossfire), and Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street
and The Woman in the Window).
Silver,
Alain and Elizabeth Ward (eds), Film Noir: An Encyclopedia Reference
to the American Style (Overlook Press, 3rd edition, 1993). Editorial
review from amazon.com, by Deborah L. Alpi (author of Robert
Siodmak: A Critical Biography with Analyses of his Films Noirs):
‘This
encyclopedia is a valuable addition to any Film Noir library. It contains
production credits, plot summmaries, and brief analyses of hundreds
of films noirs, as well as excellent appendices which include summaries
of the Film Noir genre and a chronology. The analyses are in general
quite good, if brief…’ Crimeculture.com: the indispensable
reference book for any student of film noir.
Simpson, Philip L., Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through
Contemporary American Film and Fiction (Southern Illinois Univ
Pr, 2000). See details in Crime Fiction section.
Telotte,
J. P., Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir
(Univ of Illinois Pr, 1989). Synopsis: ‘Telotte’s
in-depth discussion of classic films noirs – including The
Lady from Shanghai, The Lady in the Lake, Dark Passage,
Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly and Murder, My
Sweet – draws on the work of Michel Foucault to examine four
dominant noir narrative strategies.’ Crimeculture.com:
an essential text for students of the genre interested in analysing
the characteristics of noir narration.
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