Derek B. Scott
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195309461
- eISBN:
- 9780199871254
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309461.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter investigates the music of the artistic cabarets of Montmartre, especially the Chat Noir, and finds a contradictory character in its reception. Aristide Bruant's chansons, for example, ...
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This chapter investigates the music of the artistic cabarets of Montmartre, especially the Chat Noir, and finds a contradictory character in its reception. Aristide Bruant's chansons, for example, have been regarded as a mouthpiece for the Parisian underclass, but evidence shows they also served as entertainment for the affluent who enjoyed “slumming” in Montmartre. The chapter argues for an interpretation of the chansons modernes that locates their meaning and value in the context of debates about the modern, the popular, and the avant-garde. They need to be understood as part of a new type of artistic cabaret that engaged with the contradictions and complexities of modernity, and spread quickly throughout Europe (to Barcelona, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna).Less
This chapter investigates the music of the artistic cabarets of Montmartre, especially the Chat Noir, and finds a contradictory character in its reception. Aristide Bruant's chansons, for example, have been regarded as a mouthpiece for the Parisian underclass, but evidence shows they also served as entertainment for the affluent who enjoyed “slumming” in Montmartre. The chapter argues for an interpretation of the chansons modernes that locates their meaning and value in the context of debates about the modern, the popular, and the avant-garde. They need to be understood as part of a new type of artistic cabaret that engaged with the contradictions and complexities of modernity, and spread quickly throughout Europe (to Barcelona, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna).
Lucas Hollister
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942180
- eISBN:
- 9781789623642
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In ...
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Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In the aftermath of the efflorescence of experimental literature and theory that characterized the Trente Glorieuses (1945-75), ‘contemporary’ French literature is often said to embrace more traditional or readable novelistic forms. This rejection of the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature, this rehabilitation of fictional forms that have been called sub-literary, regressive, or outdated, has been given a name: the ‘return to the story.’ Beyond Return proposes new perspectives on the cultural politics of such fictions. Examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions, this book shows how authors like Jean Echenoz, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Rouaud, and Antoine Volodine develop radically dissimilar notions of the aesthetics of ‘return,’ and thus redraw in different manners the boundaries of the contemporary, the French, and the literary. In the process, Beyond Return argues for the need to move beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the ‘return to the story’ in order to appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.Less
Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In the aftermath of the efflorescence of experimental literature and theory that characterized the Trente Glorieuses (1945-75), ‘contemporary’ French literature is often said to embrace more traditional or readable novelistic forms. This rejection of the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature, this rehabilitation of fictional forms that have been called sub-literary, regressive, or outdated, has been given a name: the ‘return to the story.’ Beyond Return proposes new perspectives on the cultural politics of such fictions. Examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions, this book shows how authors like Jean Echenoz, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Rouaud, and Antoine Volodine develop radically dissimilar notions of the aesthetics of ‘return,’ and thus redraw in different manners the boundaries of the contemporary, the French, and the literary. In the process, Beyond Return argues for the need to move beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the ‘return to the story’ in order to appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.
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.
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]
Ben McCann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719091148
- eISBN:
- 9781526124111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091148.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his ...
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This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.Less
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.
Sarah Trott
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496808646
- eISBN:
- 9781496808684
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496808646.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Hard-boiled writer Raymond Chandler created his detective Philip Marlowe not as the idealisation of heroic individualism as is commonly perceived, but as an authentic individual subjected to real ...
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Hard-boiled writer Raymond Chandler created his detective Philip Marlowe not as the idealisation of heroic individualism as is commonly perceived, but as an authentic individual subjected to real psychological frailties resulting from his traumatic experiences during World War One. Marlowe’s characterisation goes beyond the traditional chivalric readings and can instead be interpreted as an authentic representation of a traumatised veteran in American society. Substituting the horror of the trenches for the corruption of the city, Chandler’s disillusioned protagonist and his representation of an uncaring American society resonate strongly with the dislocation of the Lost Generation. Consequently, it is profitable to consider Chandler as both a generic writer and a genuine literary figure. This book re-examines important primary documents highlighting extensive discrepancies in existing biographical narratives of Chandler’s war experience, and unveils an account that is significantly different from that of his biographers. Utilizing psychological behavioural interpretation to interrogate Chandler’s novels demonstrates the variety of post-traumatic symptoms that tormented Chandler and his protagonist. A close reading of his personal papers reveals the war trauma subconsciously encoded in Marlowe’s characterisation. This conflation of the hard-boiled style and war experience – a war noir – has influenced many contemporary crime writers, particularly in the traumatic aftermath of the Vietnam War. This work offers a new understanding of Chandler’s traumatic war experience, how that experience established the traditional archetype of detective fiction, and how this reading of his work allows Chandler to transcend generic limitations to be recognised as a key twentieth century literary figure.Less
Hard-boiled writer Raymond Chandler created his detective Philip Marlowe not as the idealisation of heroic individualism as is commonly perceived, but as an authentic individual subjected to real psychological frailties resulting from his traumatic experiences during World War One. Marlowe’s characterisation goes beyond the traditional chivalric readings and can instead be interpreted as an authentic representation of a traumatised veteran in American society. Substituting the horror of the trenches for the corruption of the city, Chandler’s disillusioned protagonist and his representation of an uncaring American society resonate strongly with the dislocation of the Lost Generation. Consequently, it is profitable to consider Chandler as both a generic writer and a genuine literary figure. This book re-examines important primary documents highlighting extensive discrepancies in existing biographical narratives of Chandler’s war experience, and unveils an account that is significantly different from that of his biographers. Utilizing psychological behavioural interpretation to interrogate Chandler’s novels demonstrates the variety of post-traumatic symptoms that tormented Chandler and his protagonist. A close reading of his personal papers reveals the war trauma subconsciously encoded in Marlowe’s characterisation. This conflation of the hard-boiled style and war experience – a war noir – has influenced many contemporary crime writers, particularly in the traumatic aftermath of the Vietnam War. This work offers a new understanding of Chandler’s traumatic war experience, how that experience established the traditional archetype of detective fiction, and how this reading of his work allows Chandler to transcend generic limitations to be recognised as a key twentieth century literary figure.
Steven Peacock
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719086953
- eISBN:
- 9781781706336
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086953.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Swedish crime fiction became an international phenomenon in the first decade of the twenty-first century, starting with novels but then percolating through Swedish-language television serials and ...
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Swedish crime fiction became an international phenomenon in the first decade of the twenty-first century, starting with novels but then percolating through Swedish-language television serials and films into English-language BBC productions and Hollywood remakes. This book looks at the rich history of Nordic noir, examines the appeal of this particular genre, and attempt to reveal why it is distinct from the plethora of other crime fictions.Less
Swedish crime fiction became an international phenomenon in the first decade of the twenty-first century, starting with novels but then percolating through Swedish-language television serials and films into English-language BBC productions and Hollywood remakes. This book looks at the rich history of Nordic noir, examines the appeal of this particular genre, and attempt to reveal why it is distinct from the plethora of other crime fictions.
Robert Pippin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501736094
- eISBN:
- 9781501736117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501736094.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chinatown, a landmark of the New Hollywood, successfully recreates and revises the classic film noir milieu. Setting the film in the Los Angeles of the late nineteen-thirties, the aptness of such a ...
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Chinatown, a landmark of the New Hollywood, successfully recreates and revises the classic film noir milieu. Setting the film in the Los Angeles of the late nineteen-thirties, the aptness of such a setting for the United States of the nineteen-seventies is intentionally suggested. But the film’s creation of such a noir tonality is so successful that it raises the question of whether the unambiguous and profound evil present in the film suggests a world gone wrong—so wrong that no “right” action in such a world is conceivable. This chapter will examine what it would mean to suggest the wrongness of an entire way of life, what is responsible for such wrongness, and what it suggests about the possibility (or impossibility) of any right action in such a world.Less
Chinatown, a landmark of the New Hollywood, successfully recreates and revises the classic film noir milieu. Setting the film in the Los Angeles of the late nineteen-thirties, the aptness of such a setting for the United States of the nineteen-seventies is intentionally suggested. But the film’s creation of such a noir tonality is so successful that it raises the question of whether the unambiguous and profound evil present in the film suggests a world gone wrong—so wrong that no “right” action in such a world is conceivable. This chapter will examine what it would mean to suggest the wrongness of an entire way of life, what is responsible for such wrongness, and what it suggests about the possibility (or impossibility) of any right action in such a world.
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.
Andrew Nestingen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The term ‘Nordic noir’ has gained currency as the catchall term for crime fiction on page, screen, and television from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. While film noir is a minor ...
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The term ‘Nordic noir’ has gained currency as the catchall term for crime fiction on page, screen, and television from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. While film noir is a minor tradition in Nordic cinema, neo-noir has come to figure prominently in Nordic cinema. All the Nordic cinemas (except Iceland) produced films during the 1940s and 1950, which scholars and critics would later come to see as films noir. Since the 1990s, neo-noir has figured prominently in Nordic cinema, often as part of films inspired by, or adapted from, Nordic crime fiction. Nordic crime fiction itself has come to be known as ‘Nordic noir,’ particularly in UK usage. In the Nordic noir universe, criminals tend to be humanized, and often childhood experience or a traumatic event is used to gloss their criminality. The doomed characters of Nordic noir thus have their fates shaped by social forces, in a way somewhat reminiscent of the characters in the French poetic realist films of the 1930s. Their fates are not a matter of chance, pathology, or pursuit of anti-social pleasure. Such a worldview also resonates with the social-democratic outlook, which dominated political life in the Nordic countries from in the 1930s to the 1980s – the war years, excepted. The noir legacy is also relevant for its impact on auteur filmmakers, notably Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismäki, who draw on classical noir, as well as the poetic realist films, to give their films a sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, neo-noir quality.Less
The term ‘Nordic noir’ has gained currency as the catchall term for crime fiction on page, screen, and television from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. While film noir is a minor tradition in Nordic cinema, neo-noir has come to figure prominently in Nordic cinema. All the Nordic cinemas (except Iceland) produced films during the 1940s and 1950, which scholars and critics would later come to see as films noir. Since the 1990s, neo-noir has figured prominently in Nordic cinema, often as part of films inspired by, or adapted from, Nordic crime fiction. Nordic crime fiction itself has come to be known as ‘Nordic noir,’ particularly in UK usage. In the Nordic noir universe, criminals tend to be humanized, and often childhood experience or a traumatic event is used to gloss their criminality. The doomed characters of Nordic noir thus have their fates shaped by social forces, in a way somewhat reminiscent of the characters in the French poetic realist films of the 1930s. Their fates are not a matter of chance, pathology, or pursuit of anti-social pleasure. Such a worldview also resonates with the social-democratic outlook, which dominated political life in the Nordic countries from in the 1930s to the 1980s – the war years, excepted. The noir legacy is also relevant for its impact on auteur filmmakers, notably Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismäki, who draw on classical noir, as well as the poetic realist films, to give their films a sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, neo-noir quality.
Mark Bould
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Post-noir’ is, like all noir labels, heavily contested; even the need for it is open to question. Drawing on Fredric Jameson, Anne McClintock, Jean-François Lyotard and Kwame Anthony Appiah, this ...
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Post-noir’ is, like all noir labels, heavily contested; even the need for it is open to question. Drawing on Fredric Jameson, Anne McClintock, Jean-François Lyotard and Kwame Anthony Appiah, this essay examines several specific – and contradictory – uses of the term/concept to identify its potential utility in distinguishing between and grouping together varieties of noir filmmaking at this current conjuncture. Following the example of Jennifer Fay and Justus Nieland, this essay treats noir as a mode of exploring the effects of a global capitalism on local cultures. A transnational thriller such as The International (2009) depicts the kinds of corruption that have become ‘business as usual’. More localised conspiracy narratives – the Colombian Perder es cuestión de método/The Art of Losing (2004), the Indian Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) – incorporate a stronger sense of the lives impoverished by corporate globalisation. The US Frozen River (2008) and the Chinese Mang jing/Blind Shaft (2003) focus on the local but pointedly connect immiserated lives to the circulation of global capital. If ‘post-noir’ does have a use, perhaps it is this: to describe contemporary noir that, after all that gleeful pastiche, has gotten back to the business of critique.Less
Post-noir’ is, like all noir labels, heavily contested; even the need for it is open to question. Drawing on Fredric Jameson, Anne McClintock, Jean-François Lyotard and Kwame Anthony Appiah, this essay examines several specific – and contradictory – uses of the term/concept to identify its potential utility in distinguishing between and grouping together varieties of noir filmmaking at this current conjuncture. Following the example of Jennifer Fay and Justus Nieland, this essay treats noir as a mode of exploring the effects of a global capitalism on local cultures. A transnational thriller such as The International (2009) depicts the kinds of corruption that have become ‘business as usual’. More localised conspiracy narratives – the Colombian Perder es cuestión de método/The Art of Losing (2004), the Indian Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) – incorporate a stronger sense of the lives impoverished by corporate globalisation. The US Frozen River (2008) and the Chinese Mang jing/Blind Shaft (2003) focus on the local but pointedly connect immiserated lives to the circulation of global capital. If ‘post-noir’ does have a use, perhaps it is this: to describe contemporary noir that, after all that gleeful pastiche, has gotten back to the business of critique.
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.
Anders Wilhelm Åberg
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780748693184
- eISBN:
- 9781474412223
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693184.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In a globalised world, the notions of neatly defined, homogeneous ethnies or national identities are difficult to sustain, especially if they are construed as organic features of social organisation ...
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In a globalised world, the notions of neatly defined, homogeneous ethnies or national identities are difficult to sustain, especially if they are construed as organic features of social organisation and historical development. Instead, the present moment is characterised by hybridisation, multiculturalism and all manners of transnational movement, flux and entanglement. It has even been argued that we are now situated in a postnational condition, where the construction of supranationals, such as the European Union, and the transnational, ‘deregulated’, cross-border movement of capital, cultures and people is indicative of a decline of nations and traditional concepts of the national as key factors. Although the relation between the ‘transnational’ and the ‘postnational’ is not absolutely clear in this line of argument, the terms can be understood as connoting progressive stages in the decline of the national in the face of the challenges of globalisation. In this chapter, I will discuss the Swedish/Danish television series Bron|Broen (The Bridge, 2011–) as a transnational media phenomenon, where conceptions of nation are thematised. I will argue, against the backdrop briefly introduced above, that the discourse of nation in Bron|Broen is a vital part of its adaptability.Less
In a globalised world, the notions of neatly defined, homogeneous ethnies or national identities are difficult to sustain, especially if they are construed as organic features of social organisation and historical development. Instead, the present moment is characterised by hybridisation, multiculturalism and all manners of transnational movement, flux and entanglement. It has even been argued that we are now situated in a postnational condition, where the construction of supranationals, such as the European Union, and the transnational, ‘deregulated’, cross-border movement of capital, cultures and people is indicative of a decline of nations and traditional concepts of the national as key factors. Although the relation between the ‘transnational’ and the ‘postnational’ is not absolutely clear in this line of argument, the terms can be understood as connoting progressive stages in the decline of the national in the face of the challenges of globalisation. In this chapter, I will discuss the Swedish/Danish television series Bron|Broen (The Bridge, 2011–) as a transnational media phenomenon, where conceptions of nation are thematised. I will argue, against the backdrop briefly introduced above, that the discourse of nation in Bron|Broen is a vital part of its adaptability.
Jim Leach
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
British film noir is not a pale imitation of its Hollywood counterpart, as its critics have often claimed. The frequent casting of American actors did indeed feed into widespread concerns about the ...
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British film noir is not a pale imitation of its Hollywood counterpart, as its critics have often claimed. The frequent casting of American actors did indeed feed into widespread concerns about the perceived Americanization of the national culture, as did the filmmakers’ resistance to the critical canon of ‘quality’ cinema in the late 1940s. The films’ vision of postwar Britain drew on discourses lamenting the political and moral decline of the nation, while later films placed these themes within the context of emergent youth culture and the consumer society. Anxieties about sexuality, crime and national identity were worked through in the figures of the spiv and the femme fatale. Several films also used the point-of-view of a child to bring out the strangeness of the adult world, reinforcing the nightmare quality of the noir vision. As in the case of Hollywood, the classic period of film noir, when the darkness was evoked by the shadowy black-and-white cinematography, ended with the shift to colour in the 1960s. However, many later British “neo-noir” films revived noir themes and style, with varying degrees of nostalgia and critique, to explore continuities and discontinuities with the nation’s past.Less
British film noir is not a pale imitation of its Hollywood counterpart, as its critics have often claimed. The frequent casting of American actors did indeed feed into widespread concerns about the perceived Americanization of the national culture, as did the filmmakers’ resistance to the critical canon of ‘quality’ cinema in the late 1940s. The films’ vision of postwar Britain drew on discourses lamenting the political and moral decline of the nation, while later films placed these themes within the context of emergent youth culture and the consumer society. Anxieties about sexuality, crime and national identity were worked through in the figures of the spiv and the femme fatale. Several films also used the point-of-view of a child to bring out the strangeness of the adult world, reinforcing the nightmare quality of the noir vision. As in the case of Hollywood, the classic period of film noir, when the darkness was evoked by the shadowy black-and-white cinematography, ended with the shift to colour in the 1960s. However, many later British “neo-noir” films revived noir themes and style, with varying degrees of nostalgia and critique, to explore continuities and discontinuities with the nation’s past.
Susan Hayward
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions ...
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This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions that, to my mind, embody the spirit of this generic typology. This means leaving réalisme noir films and most gangster films to one side (whilst acknowledging that a looser definition of noir might encompass them). I begin, therefore, in 1947 with Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres and end, in 1979, with Série noire. This has produced a selection of 17 films which offer an interesting arc when examined against the evolving economic climate of this thirty-year period as France moves from its post-war trauma through the so-called trente-glorieuses years of economic recovery.Less
This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions that, to my mind, embody the spirit of this generic typology. This means leaving réalisme noir films and most gangster films to one side (whilst acknowledging that a looser definition of noir might encompass them). I begin, therefore, in 1947 with Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres and end, in 1979, with Série noire. This has produced a selection of 17 films which offer an interesting arc when examined against the evolving economic climate of this thirty-year period as France moves from its post-war trauma through the so-called trente-glorieuses years of economic recovery.
David Desser
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
As with American film noir, named retrospectively by French critics, so, too, Japanese noir was similarly imagined from a retrospective point of view. Criterion’s release of a group of films in their ...
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As with American film noir, named retrospectively by French critics, so, too, Japanese noir was similarly imagined from a retrospective point of view. Criterion’s release of a group of films in their Eclipse series under the rubric “Nikkatsu Noir” marks a good place to start a conversation about Japanese Noir. This chapter traces Japanese noir from the late 1950s, when Nikkatsu Studios initiated a series of dark, violent, paranoid thrillers, through the turn of the new millennium. Along the way the chapter traces the recurrence of common character types, in particular the professional killer, or hit-man, and the private eye; particular narrative motifs, such as flight, vengeance and attempts to go straight; and defining images, including “borderlessness,” and, especially the gun. There is also examination of gender issues, highlighting the significant presence of women in the genre through examination of the career of Kaji Meiko, Natsume Rei, and Yonekura Ryoko. These films, often dubbed “girls with guns,” distinguishes Japanese neo-noir from much other international noir. And major directors are examined, including Nomura Takashi, Suzuki Norifumi, Miike Takashi, Hayashi Kaizo, Ikeda Toshiharu and Tsukamoto Shinya.Less
As with American film noir, named retrospectively by French critics, so, too, Japanese noir was similarly imagined from a retrospective point of view. Criterion’s release of a group of films in their Eclipse series under the rubric “Nikkatsu Noir” marks a good place to start a conversation about Japanese Noir. This chapter traces Japanese noir from the late 1950s, when Nikkatsu Studios initiated a series of dark, violent, paranoid thrillers, through the turn of the new millennium. Along the way the chapter traces the recurrence of common character types, in particular the professional killer, or hit-man, and the private eye; particular narrative motifs, such as flight, vengeance and attempts to go straight; and defining images, including “borderlessness,” and, especially the gun. There is also examination of gender issues, highlighting the significant presence of women in the genre through examination of the career of Kaji Meiko, Natsume Rei, and Yonekura Ryoko. These films, often dubbed “girls with guns,” distinguishes Japanese neo-noir from much other international noir. And major directors are examined, including Nomura Takashi, Suzuki Norifumi, Miike Takashi, Hayashi Kaizo, Ikeda Toshiharu and Tsukamoto Shinya.
Corey K. Creekmur
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Any responsible claim for the existence of Indian film noir must waver with critical uncertainty. Nevertheless, while crime stories, as elsewhere, have been an unsurprisingly common component of ...
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Any responsible claim for the existence of Indian film noir must waver with critical uncertainty. Nevertheless, while crime stories, as elsewhere, have been an unsurprisingly common component of Indian popular cinema, contemporary critics have, if only in passing, increasingly attributed a ‘darker’ aspect to a portion of India’s vast corpus of films, thereby affiliating these recently retrieved examples with Hollywood and other commercial national cinemas, in effect constructing a comparative perspective that retrospectively ‘corrects’ the absence of popular Indian cinema from most historical accounts of world cinema until the 1990s. A cycle of popular Hindi films, almost all set in (then) contemporary Bombay, regularly featured many of the characteristic elements of Hollywood film noir, including heroes (most consistently embodied throughout the period by the suave star Dev Anand) who skirt the border of legal and illegal activity; like their counterparts in American film noir, these are men who are streetwise but can confidentially negotiate swanky nightclubs featuring alluring femmes fatale (often explicitly Westernized through signifiers such as clothing, smoking, and the use of English) as well as the semi-illicit temptations of alcohol and gambling. Even somewhat earlier, since the mid-1970s, representations of Bombay’s criminal underworld and the glamorous if doomed lives of gangland ‘dons’ and ‘goondas’ (gangsters) had become staples of Hindi cinema. The latter half of the decade was especially dominated by a series of films featuring superstar Amitabh Bachchan in his wildly popular ‘angry young man’ persona.Less
Any responsible claim for the existence of Indian film noir must waver with critical uncertainty. Nevertheless, while crime stories, as elsewhere, have been an unsurprisingly common component of Indian popular cinema, contemporary critics have, if only in passing, increasingly attributed a ‘darker’ aspect to a portion of India’s vast corpus of films, thereby affiliating these recently retrieved examples with Hollywood and other commercial national cinemas, in effect constructing a comparative perspective that retrospectively ‘corrects’ the absence of popular Indian cinema from most historical accounts of world cinema until the 1990s. A cycle of popular Hindi films, almost all set in (then) contemporary Bombay, regularly featured many of the characteristic elements of Hollywood film noir, including heroes (most consistently embodied throughout the period by the suave star Dev Anand) who skirt the border of legal and illegal activity; like their counterparts in American film noir, these are men who are streetwise but can confidentially negotiate swanky nightclubs featuring alluring femmes fatale (often explicitly Westernized through signifiers such as clothing, smoking, and the use of English) as well as the semi-illicit temptations of alcohol and gambling. Even somewhat earlier, since the mid-1970s, representations of Bombay’s criminal underworld and the glamorous if doomed lives of gangland ‘dons’ and ‘goondas’ (gangsters) had become staples of Hindi cinema. The latter half of the decade was especially dominated by a series of films featuring superstar Amitabh Bachchan in his wildly popular ‘angry young man’ persona.
Lucas Hollister
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942180
- eISBN:
- 9781789623642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942180.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines Jean-Patrick Manchette, ‘father of the néo-polar,’ who is widely credited with bringing French crime fiction into step with the radical left politics of the 1970s. This chapter ...
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This chapter examines Jean-Patrick Manchette, ‘father of the néo-polar,’ who is widely credited with bringing French crime fiction into step with the radical left politics of the 1970s. This chapter argues that an attention to questions of generic conventions and narrative shape allows us to reconsider the politics of noir as a literary form. This reconsideration of Manchette’s fictional politics begins with a close reading of Manchette’s essays on what he called the forme-polar or noir form. I then analyze two of Manchette’s late novels, Three to Kill (1976) and The Prone Gunman (1981), showing how issues of masculinity, gendered violence, and (post-)colonial violence are embedded in these fictions. Moving to questions of narrative shape and meta-aesthetic rhetoric, I show how Manchette’s work offers a radical and challenging view of the implications of working with and in cliché. Ultimately, this chapter lays out the case for a more expansive reading of Manchette’s work, one which goes beyond populist narratives about the noir novel in France, and which reads Manchette’s work as a politicized challenge to the ‘noir form’ itself.Less
This chapter examines Jean-Patrick Manchette, ‘father of the néo-polar,’ who is widely credited with bringing French crime fiction into step with the radical left politics of the 1970s. This chapter argues that an attention to questions of generic conventions and narrative shape allows us to reconsider the politics of noir as a literary form. This reconsideration of Manchette’s fictional politics begins with a close reading of Manchette’s essays on what he called the forme-polar or noir form. I then analyze two of Manchette’s late novels, Three to Kill (1976) and The Prone Gunman (1981), showing how issues of masculinity, gendered violence, and (post-)colonial violence are embedded in these fictions. Moving to questions of narrative shape and meta-aesthetic rhetoric, I show how Manchette’s work offers a radical and challenging view of the implications of working with and in cliché. Ultimately, this chapter lays out the case for a more expansive reading of Manchette’s work, one which goes beyond populist narratives about the noir novel in France, and which reads Manchette’s work as a politicized challenge to the ‘noir form’ itself.
Lucas Hollister
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942180
- eISBN:
- 9781789623642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942180.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
In this chapter, I examine how Jean Echenoz transforms and repurposes popular genres—specifically crime fiction and the war novel--in subtly political manners. Through readings of Echenoz’s ...
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In this chapter, I examine how Jean Echenoz transforms and repurposes popular genres—specifically crime fiction and the war novel--in subtly political manners. Through readings of Echenoz’s (anti-)mystery novel A Year (1997) and his short war novel 1914 (2012), I show how Echenoz smuggles biopolitical and spectral problematics into his works, enlarging the conceptual scope of popular story forms and genre fictions. My reading of Echenoz positions him not as a writer that brings us back to the pleasures of story, but rather as a writer who demonstrates how we can alter the generic conventions and narrative strategies of popular violent fiction in order to account for biopolitical exclusion and mediated phantom pain. Echenoz is thus a writer who shows us some ingenious strategies for rethinking the uses of forms and genres.Less
In this chapter, I examine how Jean Echenoz transforms and repurposes popular genres—specifically crime fiction and the war novel--in subtly political manners. Through readings of Echenoz’s (anti-)mystery novel A Year (1997) and his short war novel 1914 (2012), I show how Echenoz smuggles biopolitical and spectral problematics into his works, enlarging the conceptual scope of popular story forms and genre fictions. My reading of Echenoz positions him not as a writer that brings us back to the pleasures of story, but rather as a writer who demonstrates how we can alter the generic conventions and narrative strategies of popular violent fiction in order to account for biopolitical exclusion and mediated phantom pain. Echenoz is thus a writer who shows us some ingenious strategies for rethinking the uses of forms and genres.
Erik Dussere
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199969913
- eISBN:
- 9780199369027
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The book conceives the literary and cinematic category of “noir” as a way of understanding the defining conflict between authenticity and consumer culture in post–World War II America. It analyzes ...
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The book conceives the literary and cinematic category of “noir” as a way of understanding the defining conflict between authenticity and consumer culture in post–World War II America. It analyzes works of fiction and film in order to argue that both contribute to a “noir tradition” that is initiated around the end of World War II and continues to develop and evolve in the present. All of noir’s evolutions have taken place as responses to consumer culture; in the postwar era this consumer culture has become conflated with American citizenship, and the noir tradition presents itself as an “authentic” alternative to this republic of consumption. In order to see how noir and its descendants stage the confrontation between consumer culture and authenticity, my analysis is concentrated on how the texts that I write about represent various kinds of American commercial spaces. This analysis has a three-part structure, organized around the three key moments in the development of the noir tradition that I identify: (1) the postwar moment, as represented by classic film noir and hard-boiled detective fiction; (2) the sixties era, during which noir film and fiction are transformed and take the new form of the conspiracy narrative; and (3) the post-eighties period of dominant postmodernism, in which noir themes and aesthetics are revived, with a difference, to facilitate ways of responding to the phenomenon of global capitalism.Less
The book conceives the literary and cinematic category of “noir” as a way of understanding the defining conflict between authenticity and consumer culture in post–World War II America. It analyzes works of fiction and film in order to argue that both contribute to a “noir tradition” that is initiated around the end of World War II and continues to develop and evolve in the present. All of noir’s evolutions have taken place as responses to consumer culture; in the postwar era this consumer culture has become conflated with American citizenship, and the noir tradition presents itself as an “authentic” alternative to this republic of consumption. In order to see how noir and its descendants stage the confrontation between consumer culture and authenticity, my analysis is concentrated on how the texts that I write about represent various kinds of American commercial spaces. This analysis has a three-part structure, organized around the three key moments in the development of the noir tradition that I identify: (1) the postwar moment, as represented by classic film noir and hard-boiled detective fiction; (2) the sixties era, during which noir film and fiction are transformed and take the new form of the conspiracy narrative; and (3) the post-eighties period of dominant postmodernism, in which noir themes and aesthetics are revived, with a difference, to facilitate ways of responding to the phenomenon of global capitalism.