Author: Alain Silver Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 0879102802 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 359
Book Description
In the wake of the remarkable success of Film Noir Reader, this new collection further explores a genre of limitless fascination -- and one that continues to inspire and galvanise the latest generation of film-makers. Again heavily illustrated, with close to 150 stills, Film Noir Reader 2 is organised much like the earlier volume.
Author: Nicholas Christopher Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439137617 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Along with the cowboy of the Wild West, the denizen of the film noir city is at the very center of our mythological iconography. Described as the style of an anxious victor, film noir began during the post-war period, a strange time of hope and optimism mixed with fear and even paranoia. The shadow of this rich and powerful cinematic style can now be seen in virtually every artistic medium. The spectacular success of recent neo-film noirs is only the tip of an iceberg. In the dead-on, nocturnal jazz of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, the chilled urban landscapes of Edward Hopper, and postwar literary fiction from Nelson Algren and William S. Burroughs to pulp masters like Horace McCoy, we find an unsettling recognition of the dark hollowness beneath the surface of the American Dream. Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance. Somewhere in the Night can be appreciated as a lucid introduction to a fundamental style of American culture, and also as a guide to film noir's heyday. Ultimately, though, as the work of a bold talent adeptly manipulating poetic cadence and metaphor, it is itself a superb aesthetic artifact.
Author: James Naremore Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520254023 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 403
Book Description
"Supplies the first study of film noir that achieves the sort of intellectual seriousness, depth of research, degree of critical insight, and level of writing that this group of films deserves."—Tom Gunning, Modernism and Modernity
Author: Robert Porfirio Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 9780879109615 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
(Limelight). 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 ).
Author: Eddie Muller Publisher: Running Press Adult ISBN: 076249896X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
This revised and expanded edition of Eddie Muller's Dark City is a film noir lover's bible, taking readers on a tour of the urban landscape of the grim and gritty genre in a definitive, highly illustrated volume. Dark Cityexpands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life. Eddie Muller, host of Turner Classic Movies' Noir Alley, takes readers on a spellbinding trip through treacherous terrain: Hollywood in the post-World War II years, where art, politics, scandal, style -- and brilliant craftsmanship -- produced a new approach to moviemaking, and a new type of cultural mythology.
Author: Mark T. Conard Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813171709 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
A drifter with no name and no past, driven purely by desire, is convinced by a beautiful woman to murder her husband. A hard-drinking detective down on his luck becomes involved with a gang of criminals in pursuit of a priceless artifact. The stories are at once romantic, pessimistic, filled with anxiety and a sense of alienation, and they define the essence of film noir. Noir emerged as a prominent American film genre in the early 1940s, distinguishable by its use of unusual lighting, sinister plots, mysterious characters, and dark themes. From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), films from this classic period reflect an atmosphere of corruption and social decay that attracted such accomplished directors as John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles. The Philosophy of Film Noir is the first volume to focus exclusively on the philosophical underpinnings of these iconic films. Drawing on the work of diverse thinkers, from the French existentialist Albert Camus to the Frankurt school theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the volume connects film noir to the philosophical questions of a modern, often nihilistic, world. Opening with an examination of what constitutes noir cinema, the book interprets the philosophical elements consistently present in the films—themes such as moral ambiguity, reason versus passion, and pessimism. The contributors to the volume also argue that the essence and elements of noir have fundamentally influenced movies outside of the traditional noir period. Neo-noir films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Fight Club (1999), and Memento (2000) have reintroduced the genre to a contemporary audience. As they assess the concepts present in individual films, the contributors also illuminate and explore the philosophical themes that surface in popular culture. A close examination of one of the most significant artistic movements of the twentieth century, The Philosophy of Film Noir reinvigorates an intellectual discussion at the intersection of popular culture and philosophy.
Author: Nathaniel Deyo Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030370585 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
Built around close readings of 11 noir films, this book seeks to refresh our understanding of “film noir” by returning to the films themselves. Pushing against totalizing or generalizing approaches, which may have the unintended effect of flattening out significant distinctions and differences between individual approaches, Film Noir and the Possibilities of Hollywood argues for the importance of staying attuned the varied and variegated formal, aesthetic and thematic strategies at work in individual films. By focusing on these strategies, the book invites readers to consider anew the enabling possibilities of Hollywood filmmaking in the studio era.
Author: Joan Copjec Publisher: Verso ISBN: 9780860914600 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
For this was the summer when, after the hiatus of the Second World War, French critics were again given the opportunity to view films from Hollywood. The films they saw, including The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity. Laura, Murder, My Sweet, and The Woman in the Window, prompted the naming and theorization of a new phenomenon: film noir. Much of what has been written about the genre since has remained within the orbit of this preliminary assessment. While sympathetic towards the early French critics, this collection of original essays attempts to move beyond their first fascinated look. Beginning with an autonomy of that look—of the 'poujadist' climate that nourished it and the imminent collapse of the Hollywood studio system that gave it its mournful inflection—Shades of Noir re-explores and calls into question the object first constructed by it. The impetus for this shift in perspective comes from the films themselves, viewed in the light of contemporary social and political concerns, and from new theoretical insights. Several contributions analyze the re-emergence of noir in recent years, most notably in the hybrid forms produced in the 1980s by the merging of noir with science fiction and horror, for example Blade Runner and Angel Heart, and in films by black directors such as Deep Cover, Straight out of Brooklyn, A Rage in Harlem and One False Move. Other essays focus on the open urban territory in which the noir hero hides out; the office spaces in Chandler, and the palpable sense of waiting that fills empty warehouses, corridors and hotel rooms. Finally, Shades of Noir pays renewed attention to the lethal relation between the sexes; to the femme fatale and the other women in noir. As the role of women expands, the femme fatale remains deadly, but her deadliness takes on new meanings. Contributors: Janet Bergstrom, Joan Copjec, Elizabeth Cowie, Manthia Diawara, Frederic Jameson, Dean MacCannel, Fred Pfeil, David Reid and Jayne L. Walker, Marc Vernet, Slavoj Zizek.
Author: Thomas C. Renzi Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786482818 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
Extremely popular and prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, Cornell Woolrich still has diehard fans who thrive on his densely packed descriptions and his spellbinding premises. A contemporary of Hammett and Chandler, he competed with them for notoriety in the pulps and became the single most adapted writer for films of the noir period. Perhaps the most famous film adaptation of a Woolrich story is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). Even today, his work is still onscreen; Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) is based on one of his tales. This book offers a detailed analysis of many of Woolrich's novels and short stories; examines films adapted from these works; and shows how Woolrich's techniques and themes influenced the noir genre. Twenty-two stories and 30 films compose the bulk of the study, though many other additions of films noirs are also considered because of their relevance to Woolrich's plots, themes and characters. The introduction includes a biographical sketch of Woolrich and his relationship to the noir era, and the book is illustrated with stills from Woolrich's noir classics.
Author: Alain Silver Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN: 9780879101978 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
(Limelight). This bountiful anthology combines all the key early writings on film noir with many newer essays, including some published here for the first time. The collection is assembled by the editors of the Third Edition of Film Noir: An Enclyclopedic Reference to the American Style , now regarded as the standard work on the subject.
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Author: Alain Silver
Author: Nicholas Christopher
Author: James Naremore
Author: Robert Porfirio
Author: Eddie Muller
Author: Mark T. Conard
Author: Nathaniel Deyo
Author: Joan Copjec
Author: Thomas C. Renzi
Author: Alain Silver