Film Noir

Film Noir is the first book to survey this delightfully depraved and highly popular cinematic world, populated by shady characters flawed by moral imperfections. The volume provides a valuable overview of the historical evolution of this genre; it teases out the critical debates over generic and stylistic elements, and charts film noir from its inception in the post–War period through to contemporary times. From Double Indemnity to Devil With a Blue Dress, Murder, My Sweet to Mulholland Falls and Woman at the Window to Usual Suspects, Film Noir enables readers to move chronologically through a cinematic world at once shadowy and seductive.

Luhr brings together a range of perspectives on a topic that has been widely discussed but remains notoriously vague. He explores the relationship between the films of the 1940s and 1950s that established the "noir" universe and the more recent films in which it has been frequently revived. The result is a text that brings a thorough and engaging analysis of this popular area of film studies for both for students and scholars.

List of Plates ix

Acknowledgments xiii

1 Introduction 1

2 Historical Overview 20

3 Critical Overview 50

4 Murder, My Sweet 73

5 Out of the Past 100

6 Kiss Me Deadly 123

7 The Long Goodbye 146

8 Chinatown 171

9 Seven 191

Afterword 215

References 217

Further Reading 223

Index 225

William Luhr is Professor of English at St. Peter′s College, Co–Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation, and Standing Editor of the Oxford University Press Online Bibliography on Cinema and Media Studies. He is the editor of The Coen Brothers Fargo (2004) and The Maltese Falcon: John Huston, Director (1995) and the author of, amongst others, Screening Genders (with Krin Gabbard, 2008), Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, third edition (co–author with Peter Lehman, 2008) and Raymond Chandler and Film, second edition (1991).

It is the most comprehensive and lucid study of the genre I have read I was also impressed with Luhr′s handling of the shift in Hollywood from the 1930s to 1940s. The morally compromised "heroes" of the 1940s were unthinkable in the 1930s. Like all good film critics, Luhr makes me want to see my favorite films again because he has shown me things I missed. And then there are all those films I didn′t see that are now on my list because of William Luhr.   (Carl Rollyson, 16 June 2012)