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Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam ( They Live by Night ), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist ( Nightmare Alley ), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress ( No Man of Her Own ), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name ( Somewhere in the Night )—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

From its earliest days, the American film industry has attracted European artists. With the rise of Hitler, filmmakers of conscience in Germany and other countries, particularly those of Jewish origin, found it difficult to survive and fledùfor their work and their livesùto the United States. Some had trouble adapting to Hollywood, but many were celebrated for their cinematic contributions, especially to the dark shadows of film noir. Driven to Darknessexplores the influence of Jewish TmigrT directors and the development of this genre. While filmmakers such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, and Edward G. Ulmer have been acknowledged as crucial to the noir canon, the impact of their Jewishness on their work has remained largely unexamined until now. Through lively and original analyses of key films, Vincent Brook penetrates the darkness, shedding new light on this popular film form and the artists who helped create it.

Early in the twentieth century a new character type emerged in the crime novels of American writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler: the \"hard-boiled\" detective, most famously exemplified by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Unlike the analytical detectives of nineteenth-century fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dupin, the new detectives encountered cases not as intricate logical puzzles but as stark challenges of manhood. In the stories of these characters and their criminal opposites, John T. Irwin explores the tension within ideas of American masculinity between subordination and independence and, for the man who becomes \"his own boss, \" the conflict between professional codes and personal desires. He shows how, within different works of hard-boiled fiction, the professional either overcomes the personal or is overcome by it, ending in ruinous relationships or in solitary integrity, and how within the genre all notions of manly independence are ultimately revealed to be illusions subordinate to fate itself. Tracing the stylistic development of the genre, Irwin demonstrates the particular influence of the novel of manners, especially the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He goes on to argue that, from the time of World War II, when hard-boiled fiction began to appear on the screen in film noir just as women entered the workforce in large numbers, many of its themes came to extend to female empowerment. Finally, he discusses how these themes persist in contemporary dramatic series on television, representing the conflicted lives of Americans into the twenty-first century.

Film noir is by definition dark, but not, this book argues, desperate. Examining twenty-eight great noir films from the earliest examples of the genre, including The Maltese Falcon , The Big Sleep , and Out of the Past , to such twenty-first-century spy films as The Good Shepherd , Syriana , and The Bourne Ultimatum , this study explores the representations of trust and commitment that noir and spy films propose. Through thorough examination, von Hallberg provides insights into the cultural history of film and our cinematic experience with the concept of trust.

Taking issue with many orthodox views of Film Noir, Frank Krutnik argues for a reorientation of this compulsively engaging area of Hollywood cultural production. Krutnik recasts the films within a generic framework and draws on recent historical and theoretical research to examine both the diversity of film noir and its significance within American popular culture of the 1940s. He considers classical Hollywood cinema, debates on genre, and the history of the emergence of character in film noir, focusing on the hard-boiled' crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain as well as the popularisationof Freudian psychoanalysis; and the social and cultural upheavals of the 1940s. The core of this book however concerns the complex representationof masculinity in the noir tough' thriller, and where and how gender interlocks with questions of genre. Analysing in detail major thrillers like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past and The Killers, alongside lesser known but nonetheless crucial films as Stranger on the Third Floor, Pitfall and Dead Reckoning Krutnik has produced a provocative and highly readable study of one of Hollywood most perennially fascinating groups of films.

01 02 The study of detectives in classical Hollywood has often overlooked the B-Movie mystery series in favour of hard-boiled film, despite the fact that many of these crime series have a cult status among film fans. Hollywood's Detectives redresses the balance by examining key detective series of the 1930s and 1940s (including Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, The Falcon and The Thin Man), as well as some that are less well-known (Michael Shayne and Torchy Blane) to explore the particular concerns and modes of representation within the detective film before the rise of hard-boiled and noir cinema. The book considers a range of concerns within the detective crime series, including the cinematic vaudeville of the B-Movie, the specific features of the detective film, the detective as an outsider and as a sign of disorder, ethnicity, national identity and class, while also examining the emergence and significance of hard-boiled and noir styles. 13 02 FRAN MASON Lecturer in Film and American Studies at the University of Winchester, UK,where he teaches in Film Studies and American Studies. He teaches and researches in film and culture with particular interests in Classical Hollywood Cinema, Crime Films and Postmodernism, andis currently researching Assassin Films and representations of the city on film. 19 02 Demonstrates a transition in Hollywood detective films during this period, from a focus on the 'whodunnit' style and the master-detective figure in the 1930s through to the development of the hard-boiled style and noir tendencies of the 1940s A new area of study - detective series have received very little critical attention up until now Fills a gap in the history of the development of film noir, which is a popular and widely-studied genre Taps into current scholarly interest in adaptation as most of these films were derived from literary detective fiction   16 02 Very little has been written on Hollywood mystery series of the 1930s and 1940s   Gates: DETECTING MEN: MASCULINITY AND THE HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE FILM; SUNY Press 2006 (primary focus is on contemporary film, but offers some consideration of detectives in this period and genre as well) 04 02 Preface Exploring Detective Films in the 1930s and 1940s: Genre, Society and Hollywood 'Such Lovely Friends': Class and Crime in 'The Thin Man' Series Between Law and Crime: The Chivalric 'Criminal' Detective Englishness and America: Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes Ordering the World: The Uncompromising Logic of Charlie Chan and Mr Moto The Rise of the Hard-boiled Detective Conclusion: Noir Detectives, Rogue Cops, Undercover Men and Police Procedurals Notes Bibliography Index 31 02 A study of Hollywood detective films from the crime series of the 1930s to the rise of the hard-boiled detective film in the 1940s 02 02 The study of Hollywood detectives has often overlooked the B-Movie mystery series in favour of hard-boiled film. Hollywood's Detectives redresses this oversight by examining key detective series of the 1930s and 1940s to explore their contributions to the detective genre.

A longstanding misconception surrounding the term French noir suggests that the post-war French thriller and film noir were a development of, or response to, a pre-existing American tradition. This book challenges this misconception, examining the complexity of this trans-Atlantic exchange and refocusing debate to include a Franco-French lineage.

Film Noir offers new perspectives on this highly popular and influential film genre, providing a useful overview of its historical evolution and the many critical debates over its stylistic elements. Brings together a range of perspectives on a topic that has been much discussed but remains notoriously ill-defined Traces the historical development of the genre, usefully exploring the relations 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 Employs a clear and intelligent writing style that makes this the perfect introduction to the genre Offers a thorough and engaging analysis of this popular area of film studies for students and scholars Presents an in-depth analysis of six key films, each exemplifying important trends of film noir: Murder, My Sweet; Out of the Past; Kiss Me Deadly; The Long Goodbye; Chinatown; and Seven.

The influence of classic film noir on the style and substance of television in the 1950s and 1960s has persisted to the present day. Its pervasiveness suggests the vitality of the noir depiction of human experience and the importance of TV for transmitting the legacy of film noir and producing new forms of noir. Noir television is also noteworthy for its capacity to raise philosophical questions about the nature of the human condition. Drawing from the fields of philosophy, media studies, and literature, the contributors to The Philosophy of TV Noir illuminate the best of noir television, including such shows as Dragnet, The Fugitive, Miami Vice, The X-Files, CSI, and 24.