Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950

by Mark A. Vieira, Turner Classic Movies

Overview

You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.

Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light.

Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura, and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane, calling Orson Welles "Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not. Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a "ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a "passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular.

About TCM:

Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. It engages, entertains, and enlightens to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762455232
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	05/24/2016
Series:	Turner Classic Movies
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	442,474
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Mark A. Vieira is a photographer and author who specializes in Hollywood history. He has lectured at USC, UCLA, Lincoln Center, Universal Studios, and the Hollywood Heritage Museum. Vieira has appeared in documentaries such as TCM's Moguls and Movie Stars and Complicated Women. He is also the author of George Hurrell's Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille, and Into the Dark, among other film-related titles. Vieira resides in Los Angeles.

Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. We entertain and enlighten to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.

Editorial Reviews

“Bursting with glossy stills and archival material, film historian and photographer Mark A. Vieira's Into The Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950 offers an unprecedented portal into Hollywood's golden era of cynicism. A systematic study of noir, this gorgeous coffee table tome fills a significant gap in scholarship on the genre.”
—MovieMaker

From the Publisher

05/15/2016
In the years before, during, and after World War II, the Hollywood studios cranked out a series of films featuring world-weary, hard-boiled men, often private investigators, and femmes fatales, acting out their sweaty, amoral impulses of lust, betrayal, and murder. Later called film noir, at the time "crime thrillers" or "murder dramas," some of these pictures such as Citizen Kane and The Lost Weekend were not centered on crime. This book, published in association with Turner Classic Movies, reviews 82 films released between 1941 and 1950, with comments from critics, exhibitors, stars, and directors. This reviewer found some of the coverage of individual films too brief (e.g., the classic The Spiral Staircase only receives a page). Changing mores, censorship issues, and that many actors, directors, and writers became victims of Hollywood's blacklist eventually doomed the genre, although it enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 1970s. Movie buffs will be thrilled with the many lovingly produced shots of actors, reproduced in (mostly) rich black-and-white portraits. VERDICT A fitting tribute to many esteemed performers, this title is recommended for film noir fanatics.—Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA

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