The detective novel/mystery novel is by far not a strictly male genre, meaning that there are not just male authors writing detective fiction about male investigators. Some of the authors of the early British mystery novels were female; there would be no Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple without Agatha Christie; and Dorothy L. Sayers is […]
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Tag: Film Noir
Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios by Ronald Schwartz (2014)
For the connoisseur of old wine, it is not impossible to determine origin, year and characteristics of a certain brand or region by taking a sample. The same goes for noir films, which due to lighting, editing, setting, or simply by their respective casts can be traced back to a particular studio or production year […]
A Companion to Film Noir by Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson (eds.) (2013)
This edition of mostly recent texts on the style, genre and aesthetics of film noir covers a huge variety of themes such as technical details and production modes, elaborates on the roots of many noir films in American (hard boiled) detective fiction and pulp stories, and expands into the survey of the many “victims,” so […]
Alfred Hitchcock’s America by Murray Pomerance (2013)
With his second publication on Alfred Hitchcock, Professor Pomerance has now given focus to the Americanization of the great director’s themes and film settings. After all, Hitchcock remained British in character all of his life and probably had not imagined becoming an American subject in his early days. That things would turn out so well […]
Pulp Fiction to Film Noir by William Hare (2012)
With the advent of the Great Depression, Hollywood discovered new characters and fresh labels of films that displayed the effects of the economic struggle on various types of individuals, be it the small-time crook, the innocent and wrongly accused businessman, the farmer or the simple secretary. All of them had to face new obstacles in […]
Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream by Mark Osteen (2013)
By choosing the rather bleak Edmund Goulding noir classic Nightmare Alley (1947) as the namesake for his new book, author Mark Osteen surprises with his fresh approach to films noir. He concentrates on the major antagonists, so to speak, of the American dream, and the American pursuit of happiness, a constitutional right in a way. […]
Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy by Robert B. Pippin (2012)
Whenever you hear a character in the next film noir you are watching say something that sounds a lot like sarcasm, heavy irony or simply like the words of a doomed man… you may have caught one of the moments Professor Pippin uses to build a whole theory. Build it around the attitude, not the […]
In Lonely Places. Film Noir Beyond the City by Imogen Sara Smith (2011)
There seem to be specific instances that make a particular type of movie clearly identifiable as belonging to a certain group. For example, we like to have deserts, gunfights and horses if we watch a western movie, and we may look out for earrings, battleships, sabers and the Jolly Roger when we watch a pirates […]
Film Noir Graphics: Where Danger Lives by Alain Silver and James Ursini (2012)
So there comes another promising title by professional collaborators team Alain Silver and James Ursini, two critics, collectors and authors of books and journals on movie directors, film industry, and film noir in particular. By their mere output, the two authors today form part of the canon of modern film noir appreciation. The reader then […]