Film Noir: A Critical Introduction

by Ian Brookes

Overview

What is film noir? With its archetypal femme fatale and private eye, its darkly-lit scenes and even darker narratives, the answer can seem obvious enough. But as Ian Brookes shows in this new study, the answer is a lot more complex than that. This book is designed to tackle those complexities in a critical introduction that takes into account the problems of straightforward definition and classification. Students will benefit from an accessible introductory text that is not just an account of what film noir is, but also an interrogation of the ways in which the term came to be applied to a disparate group of American films of the 1940s and 1950s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780933139
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/09/2017
Series:	Film Genres
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ian Brookes teaches in the Department of Culture, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he has taught film noir courses for several years. He is also the editor of Howard Hawks: New Perspectives (2016).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part 1: What is Film Noir?
1. Genre and the Problem of Film Noir
2. Visual Style and Narrative Themes
3. Genre and Gender

Part 2: The History of Film Noir
4. Prehistory and the Wartime Period, 1939-1945
5. The Postwar Period, 1945-1950
6. The Late Period, 1950-1958

Part 3: Case Study: The Veteran Problem and Postwar Film Noir
7. The Discourse of Veteran Readjustment
8. The Veteran and the Readjustment Narrative
9. Conformity, Community, and Citizenship

Coda: The End of Film Noir
Bibliography
Filmography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Film Noir has long been a fascinating, complex cinematic period style. For students interested in the problematic conception of noir as a genre, Ian Brookes surveys critical, theoretical, and historiographic scholarly discourse on noir and its multifaceted nature. Brookes traces conceptions of noir from early pre-noir antecedents to wartime and postwar incarnations of the classic noir cycle, and examines the anxieties of returning veterans.
Sheri Chinen Biesen, Author of Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir

Film Noir: A Critical Introduction is a thorough survey of the noir genre. Brookes covers critical debates over film noir's meaning and history. This text is an exemplary introduction to the subject that also covers new territory, on "veteran problem" noirs in particular. It is suitable for both course adoption and should be of interest to seasoned noir scholars.
Jesse Schlotterbeck, Assistant Professor of Cinema, Denison University, USA

From the Publisher