A Companion to Film Noir

by Spicer, Andre; Hanson, Helen

• ISBN13: 9781444336276
• ISBN10: 1444336274
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-09-23
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

An authoritative companion that offers a wide-ranging thematic survey of this enduringly popular cultural form and includes scholarship from both established and emerging scholars as well as analysis of film noir's influence on other media including television and graphic novels.

• Covers a wealth of new approaches to film noir and neo-noir that explore issues ranging from conceptualization to cross-media influences
• Features chapters exploring the wider ‘noir mediascape’ of television, graphic novels and radio
• Reflects the historical and geographical reach of film noir, from the 1920s to the present and in a variety of national cinemas
• Includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars

Author Biography

Andrew Spicer is Reader in Cultural History at the University of the West of England, UK. His principal research interests lie in film and cultural history, including genre, stardom and constructions of masculinity, British cinema, and the role of producers and screenwriters in film-making. He has published widely on all these topics, including Typical Men (2003) and Sydney Box (2006), and three volumes on film noir: Film Noir (2002), European Film Noir (2007), and the Historical Dictionary of Film Noir (2010). He is currently co-editing a volume about film producers, and writing a study of Sean Connery.

Helen Hanson is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research interests cover adaptation, gender and genre, film history, film style and technology, with a particular focus on the history of Hollywood.  She has written articles and chapters on these topics, and has authored Hollywood Heroines: Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film (2007) and co-edited The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts (2010). She also has a forthcoming book on the evolution of sound technology, sound craft and film style in Hollywood cinema from 1931–1950.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword by James Naremore

Introduction: The Problem of Film Noir
Andrew Spicer

Part I: Conceptualising Film Noir

1. The Strange Case of Film Noir
Robert Porfirio

2. Genre, Hybridity, Heterogeneity; or, the Noir-SF-Vampire-Zombie-Splatter-Romance-Comedy-Action-Thriller Problem
Mark Bould

3. A Wet Emptiness: The Phenomenology of Film Noir
Henrik Gustaffson

4. Cinephilia and Film Noir
Corey Creekmur

Part II: Hidden, Hybrid and Transmedia Histories and Influences

5. Precursors to Film Noir
Wheeler Winston Dixon

6. Criss Crossed? Film Noir and the Politics of Mobility and Exchange
Alastair Phillips

7. Film Noir and Horror
Peter Hutchings

8. Borderings: The Film Noir Semi-Documentary Film
R. Barton Palmer

9. Crime Fiction and Film Noir
William Marling

10. Film Noir, American Painting and Photography: Questions of Influence
Tom Ryall

Part III: Social, Industrial and Commercial Contexts

11. The Politics of Film Noir
Brian Neve

12. The Black Typewriter: Who Wrote Film Noir?
David Wilt

13. Film Noir and Studio Production Practices
Geoff Mayer

14. Film Noir and Post-Studio Production Practices 
John Berra

15. Selling Noir: Stars, Gender and Genre in Film Noir Posters and Publicity
Mary Beth Haralovich

Part IV: The Fabric of Film Noir: Style and Performance

16. Out of the Shadows: Noir Lighting and Hollywood Cinematography
Patrick Keating 

17. The Ambience of Film Noir: Soundscapes, Design and Mood
Helen Hanson

18. In a Lonely Tone: Music in Film Noir
David Butler

19. Acting and Performance in Film Noir
Donna Peberdy

Part V: Identities and Film Noir

20. Film Noir and Subjectivity
Christophe Gelly

21. Women in Film Noir
Yvonne Tasker

22. ‘The Corpse on Reprieve’: Film Noir’s Cautionary Tales of ‘Tough Guy’ Masculinity
Gaylyn Studlar

23. Ethnicity and Race in American Film Noir
Dan Flory

24. The Climb and the Chase: Film Noir and the Urban Scene – Representations of the City in Three Classic Noirs
Murray Pomerance

Part VI: Noir in Other Forms

25. Radio Noir
Jesse Schlottebeck

26. Television Noir
Steven Sanders

27. ‘It Rhymes with Lust’: The Twisted History of Noir Comics
James Lyons

Part VII: New Geographies of Film Noir

28. Film Noir in Asia: Historicising South Korean Crime Thrillers
Nikki J.Y. Lee and Julian Stringer 

29. Bombay Noir
Lalitha Gopalan

Index