This volume reveals film noir'srelationship to 19th century and 20th century literary movements, as well as to early European and American cinematic experiments and modernist artistic movements, particularly the French serials of Feuillade and German Expressionism. It traces the development of both the genre and style of noir from the Second World War and through the Cold War. The hard-boiled pulps of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were adapted into a visual cinematic style that became American film noir during the first years of Hollywood production. The noir debate shifted from formalist to ... More

This volume reveals film noir'srelationship to 19th century and 20th century literary movements, as well as to early European and American cinematic experiments and modernist artistic movements, particularly the French serials of Feuillade and German Expressionism. It traces the development of both the genre and style of noir from the Second World War and through the Cold War. The hard-boiled pulps of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were adapted into a visual cinematic style that became American film noir during the first years of Hollywood production. The noir debate shifted from formalist to ideological critique as exhibited in the genre's penchant for questioning American assumptions about capitalism and its prevailing themes of infiltration and risks to domestic security, as evident in Cold War noir as representations of American cultural malaise and paranoia. Much of the appeal of noir has been its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and economic corruption, and its all-too-realistic and brutal depictions of gender roles and racial conditions. Two chapters will explore film noir in terms of its representation of gender and race. The first will take the figure of the femme fatale and place it in the context of the homme fatal, thereby revealing shifting feminist theoretical approaches to cultural designations of gender and agency in the genre, as well as its relationship to issues of race in America. Along with historical commentary on gender and race will be two related chapters on recent, groundbreaking studies of music and sound in noir.