Film noir
Category: Books,Humor & Entertainment,Movies
Film noir Details
Reviews
This book examines a good 200 noirs, and provides readers with a short, thoughtful essay on each title. I appreciate any book that doesn't just give "Me too" votes to the classics (There is throughtful criticism here about This Gun for Hire and The Big Clock, and heavens! ...The Maltese Falcon!). But be warned, this is biased towards hard-boiled detective and crime Noir.Noir is an idiom that covers multiple genres. There are many, many movies in the Noir canon that were not about urban crime. Johnny Belinda is about the rape of a deafmute in Maine, and is mostly shot in Noir's low-key lighting, with an eye towards striking b&w compositions. Plain old Noir dramas are absent also (Clash by Night / Barbara Stanwyck). Where's Odd Man Out? A Woman's Face? Even 'It's a Wonderful Life' is influenced by Noir. There are also Noir hold-outs like Robert Aldrich who worked amazing noir tricks into many, many frames of 'Hush Hush Sweet Charolotte' a film which is usally lumped under 'Guignol.' If Dirty Harry and Taxi Driver (both decidely NOT noir) can make it into the book, why not Noir hold-outs? I don't regard anything buy Hitchcock as noir, but Notorious and Shadow of a Doubt are included.
