Alain Silver and James Ursini
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691074
- eISBN:
- 9781474406420
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691074.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In 1974 Alain Silver queried the Indiana University Press and was offered a contract to produce a volume on film noir for the Cinema One Series. When two collaborators dropped out of that project, ...
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In 1974 Alain Silver queried the Indiana University Press and was offered a contract to produce a volume on film noir for the Cinema One Series. When two collaborators dropped out of that project, the offer lost a lot of its lustre. Shortly thereafter, an excerpt from Alain's book-length study of the samurai film appeared in Film Comment. In retrospect, it should have been clear that such an undertaking at a time when very few of the titles of the classic period were available on demand--and then only via rentals of 16mm prints--would have to rely too heavily on the memories of the editors and contributors. When the deal was struck in the Santa Monica living room of Elizabeth Ward, who became the editor in charge of research, no one realized how monumental a task it would be. Before it was finished, the index cards that Elizabeth used to compile filmographic, bibliographic, and other details numbered 16,000. The typescript of the book's index alone was over 300 pages long. The main text was almost ten times as many pages, created by diverse hands, few of whom has access to IBM Selectrics, with a melange of Pica and Elite fonts and mostly triple-spaced to permit room for revisions and redactions that were so heavy in places, it was remarkable that a typesetter could decipher them.Less
In 1974 Alain Silver queried the Indiana University Press and was offered a contract to produce a volume on film noir for the Cinema One Series. When two collaborators dropped out of that project, the offer lost a lot of its lustre. Shortly thereafter, an excerpt from Alain's book-length study of the samurai film appeared in Film Comment. In retrospect, it should have been clear that such an undertaking at a time when very few of the titles of the classic period were available on demand--and then only via rentals of 16mm prints--would have to rely too heavily on the memories of the editors and contributors. When the deal was struck in the Santa Monica living room of Elizabeth Ward, who became the editor in charge of research, no one realized how monumental a task it would be. Before it was finished, the index cards that Elizabeth used to compile filmographic, bibliographic, and other details numbered 16,000. The typescript of the book's index alone was over 300 pages long. The main text was almost ten times as many pages, created by diverse hands, few of whom has access to IBM Selectrics, with a melange of Pica and Elite fonts and mostly triple-spaced to permit room for revisions and redactions that were so heavy in places, it was remarkable that a typesetter could decipher them.
Stephen Teo
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Most scholars and critics have generally seen film noir as an American genre, emphasizing the fact that noir films have hailed from the classic Hollywood industry, or in the case of neo-noir, from ...
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Most scholars and critics have generally seen film noir as an American genre, emphasizing the fact that noir films have hailed from the classic Hollywood industry, or in the case of neo-noir, from the post-classical Hollywood cinema. Essentially, the perspectives of these scholars focus on the American contexts surrounding the films. This chapter examines films noir produced by two major film industries in Asia, the Hong Kong and South Korean cinemas which have been the most prolific in fashioning and transforming the noir tendency for their respective Asian contexts. The chapter sets out to understand the contexts of these motion pictures including detective and gangster genre films produced over the last ten years or so. The chapter thus follows the imperative on contextuality established in American scholarship of noir. Film noir in the Asian contexts (a darker than dark sensibility and an overwhelming urge towards violence) may be seen as alternative reactions to the American contexts of noir criticism.Less
Most scholars and critics have generally seen film noir as an American genre, emphasizing the fact that noir films have hailed from the classic Hollywood industry, or in the case of neo-noir, from the post-classical Hollywood cinema. Essentially, the perspectives of these scholars focus on the American contexts surrounding the films. This chapter examines films noir produced by two major film industries in Asia, the Hong Kong and South Korean cinemas which have been the most prolific in fashioning and transforming the noir tendency for their respective Asian contexts. The chapter sets out to understand the contexts of these motion pictures including detective and gangster genre films produced over the last ten years or so. The chapter thus follows the imperative on contextuality established in American scholarship of noir. Film noir in the Asian contexts (a darker than dark sensibility and an overwhelming urge towards violence) may be seen as alternative reactions to the American contexts of noir criticism.
Matthew Carter
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474403016
- eISBN:
- 9781474422031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403016.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Matthew Carter offers an in-depth examination of Delmer Daves’ Jubal. He contextualises the film within both the Western and Hollywood more generally and argues that, both formally and thematically, ...
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Matthew Carter offers an in-depth examination of Delmer Daves’ Jubal. He contextualises the film within both the Western and Hollywood more generally and argues that, both formally and thematically, it and other prominent Westerns of the time are more closely aligned with film noir than is generally acknowledged to be the case. Applying a psychoanalytical-informed feminist analysis that considers the ideological intent of Jubal’s use of the femme fatale, he evaluates its critical-, or, counter-ideological capacity. From such a reading, he argues that the film’s narrative focus on repressed sexual desires and on the plight of the main female protagonist provides enough material to justify Jubal as constituting a critique of the excesses of patriarchal power.Less
Matthew Carter offers an in-depth examination of Delmer Daves’ Jubal. He contextualises the film within both the Western and Hollywood more generally and argues that, both formally and thematically, it and other prominent Westerns of the time are more closely aligned with film noir than is generally acknowledged to be the case. Applying a psychoanalytical-informed feminist analysis that considers the ideological intent of Jubal’s use of the femme fatale, he evaluates its critical-, or, counter-ideological capacity. From such a reading, he argues that the film’s narrative focus on repressed sexual desires and on the plight of the main female protagonist provides enough material to justify Jubal as constituting a critique of the excesses of patriarchal power.
Homer B. Pettey and R. Barton Palmer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This volume examines the influence of noir for global cinema. Close historical analysis of British and national cinemas, especially French and Japanese noir, demonstrates the global popularity of ...
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This volume examines the influence of noir for global cinema. Close historical analysis of British and national cinemas, especially French and Japanese noir, demonstrates the global popularity of both film noir’s cinematic style and narrative. A chapter devoted to British noir explores the history, style, and innovations of this burgeoning style for the pre- and post-War British film industry. Two chapters explore the historical and continuing interdependence French film and noir, from Poetic Realism through the New Wave to contemporary films. Contemporary French noirs have developed an intertext and pastiche of subcultures ranging from the upheavals of 1960s to punk, all with an evolving noir aesthetic. The Japanese film industry has a long tradition of film noir, from Kurosawa’s early films through the resurgence of Nikkatsu crime melodramas to Fukasaku’s yakuza films and the contemporary Maiku Hama private eye parodies. One chapter will analyze the pre-War and early post-War noir in Japan, while the other will be devoted to contemporary Japanese noir. In order to demonstrate the range of noir’s influence within national cinemas, chapters explore innovations in film narrative and techniques to several neglected global cinemas in the noir canon, specifically Scandinavian noir and its literary adaptations, Chinese and Korean noir, and Bombay noir. The final two chapters extend the generic and aesthetic influences of film noir, beginning with the post-1970s and the development of neo-noir to contemporary, postmodern world cinema. [232 words]Less
This volume examines the influence of noir for global cinema. Close historical analysis of British and national cinemas, especially French and Japanese noir, demonstrates the global popularity of both film noir’s cinematic style and narrative. A chapter devoted to British noir explores the history, style, and innovations of this burgeoning style for the pre- and post-War British film industry. Two chapters explore the historical and continuing interdependence French film and noir, from Poetic Realism through the New Wave to contemporary films. Contemporary French noirs have developed an intertext and pastiche of subcultures ranging from the upheavals of 1960s to punk, all with an evolving noir aesthetic. The Japanese film industry has a long tradition of film noir, from Kurosawa’s early films through the resurgence of Nikkatsu crime melodramas to Fukasaku’s yakuza films and the contemporary Maiku Hama private eye parodies. One chapter will analyze the pre-War and early post-War noir in Japan, while the other will be devoted to contemporary Japanese noir. In order to demonstrate the range of noir’s influence within national cinemas, chapters explore innovations in film narrative and techniques to several neglected global cinemas in the noir canon, specifically Scandinavian noir and its literary adaptations, Chinese and Korean noir, and Bombay noir. The final two chapters extend the generic and aesthetic influences of film noir, beginning with the post-1970s and the development of neo-noir to contemporary, postmodern world cinema. [232 words]
Homer B. Pettey and R. Barton Palmer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691074
- eISBN:
- 9781474406420
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691074.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This volume reveals film noir'srelationship to 19th century and 20th century literary movements, as well as to early European and American cinematic experiments and modernist artistic movements, ...
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This volume reveals film noir'srelationship to 19th century and 20th century literary movements, as well as to early European and American cinematic experiments and modernist artistic movements, particularly the French serials of Feuillade and German Expressionism. It traces the development of both the genre and style of noir from the Second World War and through the Cold War. The hard-boiled pulps of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were adapted into a visual cinematic style that became American film noir during the first years of Hollywood production. The noir debate shifted from formalist to ideological critique as exhibited in the genre's penchant for questioning American assumptions about capitalism and its prevailing themes of infiltration and risks to domestic security, as evident in Cold War noir as representations of American cultural malaise and paranoia. Much of the appeal of noir has been its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and economic corruption, and its all-too-realistic and brutal depictions of gender roles and racial conditions. Two chapters will explore film noir in terms of its representation of gender and race. The first will take the figure of the femme fatale and place it in the context of the homme fatal, thereby revealing shifting feminist theoretical approaches to cultural designations of gender and agency in the genre, as well as its relationship to issues of race in America. Along with historical commentary on gender and race will be two related chapters on recent, groundbreaking studies of music and sound in noir.Less
This volume reveals film noir'srelationship to 19th century and 20th century literary movements, as well as to early European and American cinematic experiments and modernist artistic movements, particularly the French serials of Feuillade and German Expressionism. It traces the development of both the genre and style of noir from the Second World War and through the Cold War. The hard-boiled pulps of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were adapted into a visual cinematic style that became American film noir during the first years of Hollywood production. The noir debate shifted from formalist to ideological critique as exhibited in the genre's penchant for questioning American assumptions about capitalism and its prevailing themes of infiltration and risks to domestic security, as evident in Cold War noir as representations of American cultural malaise and paranoia. Much of the appeal of noir has been its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and economic corruption, and its all-too-realistic and brutal depictions of gender roles and racial conditions. Two chapters will explore film noir in terms of its representation of gender and race. The first will take the figure of the femme fatale and place it in the context of the homme fatal, thereby revealing shifting feminist theoretical approaches to cultural designations of gender and agency in the genre, as well as its relationship to issues of race in America. Along with historical commentary on gender and race will be two related chapters on recent, groundbreaking studies of music and sound in noir.
Alejandro Yarza
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748699247
- eISBN:
- 9781474444729
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699247.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Critically acclaimed as a milestone of Spanish cinema, Surcos (Furrows, J.A. Nieves Conde, 1951) is the film that single-handedly revolutionized Spanish cinema by introducing the spirit of Neorealism ...
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Critically acclaimed as a milestone of Spanish cinema, Surcos (Furrows, J.A. Nieves Conde, 1951) is the film that single-handedly revolutionized Spanish cinema by introducing the spirit of Neorealism and Film Noir. Through a comparative analysis of the famous boarding sequence of Citizen Kane and few examples from Roberto Rossellini’s early films, this chapter argues that the film’s apparent appropriation of Italian neorealism and also Film Noir and, particularly, its internal strife between its progressive neorealist aesthetic and its fascist message, comes into sharper focus when seen through the lens of kitsch aesthetics. Despite its neorealist and noir appearance, Surcos is in fact a kitsch film that encapsulates Spanish fascist ideology even more insidiously than the previous ones precisely by not being an overtly propagandistic film.Less
Critically acclaimed as a milestone of Spanish cinema, Surcos (Furrows, J.A. Nieves Conde, 1951) is the film that single-handedly revolutionized Spanish cinema by introducing the spirit of Neorealism and Film Noir. Through a comparative analysis of the famous boarding sequence of Citizen Kane and few examples from Roberto Rossellini’s early films, this chapter argues that the film’s apparent appropriation of Italian neorealism and also Film Noir and, particularly, its internal strife between its progressive neorealist aesthetic and its fascist message, comes into sharper focus when seen through the lens of kitsch aesthetics. Despite its neorealist and noir appearance, Surcos is in fact a kitsch film that encapsulates Spanish fascist ideology even more insidiously than the previous ones precisely by not being an overtly propagandistic film.
Jon Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520284319
- eISBN:
- 9780520959910
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284319.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The history of Hollywood’s postwar transition is framed by two spectacular dead bodies: Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947 and Marilyn ...
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The history of Hollywood’s postwar transition is framed by two spectacular dead bodies: Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947 and Marilyn Monroe, the studio era’s last real movie star, discovered dead at her home in August 1962. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood’s awkward adolescence during which the company town’s many competing subcultures -- celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients – came into frequent contact and conflict. Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles focuses on the lives lost at the crossroads between a dreamed-of Los Angeles and the real thing after the Second World War.Less
The history of Hollywood’s postwar transition is framed by two spectacular dead bodies: Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947 and Marilyn Monroe, the studio era’s last real movie star, discovered dead at her home in August 1962. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood’s awkward adolescence during which the company town’s many competing subcultures -- celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients – came into frequent contact and conflict. Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles focuses on the lives lost at the crossroads between a dreamed-of Los Angeles and the real thing after the Second World War.
Dolores Tierney
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748645732
- eISBN:
- 9781474445238
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645732.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores Juan José Campanella and his Oscar winning El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes 2009). Unlike the other transnational auteurs focused upon in the book, he has not ...
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This chapter explores Juan José Campanella and his Oscar winning El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes 2009). Unlike the other transnational auteurs focused upon in the book, he has not followed an initial critical and commercial domestic success (El hijo de la novia) with deterritorialized feature films outside of Argentina (although he has worked in US television). However, like the transnational auteurs he has been the object of analyses that criticize the mainstream ‘commercial’ forms and venues (transnational conglomerates) he works in and question the national credentials of his filmmaking. Arguing against a critical hierarchy that rates the features of art cinema (the New Argentine Cinema) above those of a commercial cinema, the chapter explores how in El secreto de sus ojos Campanella uses genre film to engage with the legacy of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ with the period directly before it and also with the contemporary moment. This chapter argues that Campanella’s manipulation of melodrama and film noir are an effective means to self-consciously stage the past and also pose key issues of historical memory and accountability of the crimes committed during Argentina’s Dirty War.Less
This chapter explores Juan José Campanella and his Oscar winning El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes 2009). Unlike the other transnational auteurs focused upon in the book, he has not followed an initial critical and commercial domestic success (El hijo de la novia) with deterritorialized feature films outside of Argentina (although he has worked in US television). However, like the transnational auteurs he has been the object of analyses that criticize the mainstream ‘commercial’ forms and venues (transnational conglomerates) he works in and question the national credentials of his filmmaking. Arguing against a critical hierarchy that rates the features of art cinema (the New Argentine Cinema) above those of a commercial cinema, the chapter explores how in El secreto de sus ojos Campanella uses genre film to engage with the legacy of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ with the period directly before it and also with the contemporary moment. This chapter argues that Campanella’s manipulation of melodrama and film noir are an effective means to self-consciously stage the past and also pose key issues of historical memory and accountability of the crimes committed during Argentina’s Dirty War.
