Mean Streets and Raging Bulls

by Richard Martin

• ISBN13: 9780810833371
• ISBN10: 0810833379
• Format: Bound Book
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Summary

Classic film noir was Hollywood's "dark cinema" of crime and corruption, a genre underpinned by a tone of existential cynicism that stripped bare the myth of the American Dream and offered a bleak nightmare vision of a fragmented society that rhymed with many of the social realities of America in the forties and fifties. Mean Streets and Raging Bulls explores how, since its apparent demise in the late fifties, the noir genre has been revitalized during the post-studio era. First exploring the relation of noir to America's sociopolitical history and then moving on to a detailed analysis of representative texts, Martin considers such noir classics as Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975), Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1984), After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985), Sea of Love (Harold Becker, 1989), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992), and Romeo is Bleeding (Peter Medak, 1994). Not only do these films continue noir's exploration of the collective anxieties of American society but they also reflect a sustained tradition of artistic creativity and technical virtuosity nurtured within the confines of American genre cinema. Such a tradition is epitomized by the work of neo-noir auteur Martin Scorsese, whose own influence on the recent evolution of the genre is considered in some detail.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii	(2)
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
Part I From Film Noir to Neo-noir	11	(52)
1. Industrial Evolution: Conservative Policies, Low-Budget Innovation	11	(23)
2. America Noir: Political Paranoia, Social Malaise	34	(29)
Part II The Legacy of Film Noir	63	(82)
3. Seventies Revisionism	63	(27)
4. Eighties Pastiche	90	(26)
5. Nineties Irony	116	(29)
Notes	145	(18)
Select Filmography of American Film Noir	163	(10)
Bibliography	173	(16)
Index	189	(10)
About the Author	199