27 | FILM NOIR

A concise and accessible introduction to the murky world of a genre responsible for many of film's most enduring images, and the creation of iconic staple characters. Iconic and enduring, film noir attracted great stars (Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum, Lancaster) and many of the best directors of the era (Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Hawks, Siodmak, Welles). This volume discusses problems of definition and the often ambiguous nature of film noir and looks at modern films that could be called neo-noir, and the work of directors such as John Sayles, John Dahl and the Coen brothers. This book is thus an indispensible guide to this ever-popular genre.

September 2005
144 pages

978-1-904764-50-2 (pbk)

£12.99

£11.04 with 15% online discount - add to basket

Mark Bould is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of the West of England. He is the author of The Cinema of John Sayles: Lone Star and co-editor of Neo-Noir (forthcoming in 2009).

'Offers a wonderfully compact and engaging entrée to the dark, doomed world of film noir ... The delectable films that constitute this corpus, featuring hard-boiled men and even harder-boiled women, vertiginous investigations and all manner of entrapment, represent, as Bould’s indispensable volume demonstrates (see his ingenious reading of De Palma’s Femme Fatale!), a cinematic treasure-trove that one can return to, perpetually, with profit and delight.'
– Bob Miklitsch, Ohio University