Since the last two years saw an enormous wave of reissues of vintage crime novels – mostly out of print and now hard to find hard-boiled mystery – often being the source document for movies of the film-noir genre, it is not at all surprising to witness a growing interest in the movies of that […]
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Noir Fiction and Film: Diversions and Misdirections by Lee Clark Mitchell (2022)
With some interesting observations and a huge collection of data about genres in the book under discussion here, there are some good and fresh points concerning style, method and procedure, even when hard-boiled fiction and films noir are reduced to their most basic configurations. Naturally, there are variations of the stereotypes, and with regard to […]
Columbia Noir: A Complete Filmography, 1940-1962 by Gene Blottner (2015)
Columbia Pictures, today a part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, released literally tons of movies. Of those, Gene Blottner lists a selection of altogether 169 pictures, and they are all associated with film noir in one way or another, while they are from the genres of Westerns, science-fiction, drama, detective, comedy or horror movie. Columbia Pictures […]
Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios by Ronald Schwartz (2014)
For the connoisseur of old wine, it is not impossible to determine origin, year and characteristics of a certain brand or region by taking a sample. The same goes for noir films, which due to lighting, editing, setting, or simply by their respective casts can be traced back to a particular studio or production year […]
David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films...
Usually, whenever American director David Lynch introduces a new film, audiences can be almost certain that it will contain a couple of dreamlike, surreal, noir or neo-noir settings, characters or specific places. It may also feature different regional settings or the story could follow the travels or quests of the protagonist through several states. This […]
Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s by Robert P. Kolker (2021)
There are very many books on both the American post-war years and the films of the long 1950s, usually with the emphasis on a genre or a sociological topic. The book at hand, however, has a somewhat special approach, as it is preoccupied with the decade and its implications on the American public, as experienced […]
I Died a Million Times: Gangster Noir in Midcentury America by Robert Miklitsch (2021)
In his current title author Robert Miklitsch goes on a long excursion to introduce several classic 1950s movies to identify and in a way separate the gangster films of that period from the films noir. As not every gangster movie automatically was a film noir, neither did all contemporary noirs feature one or more gangsters. […]
The Western Films of Robert Mitchum. Hollywood’s Cowboy Rebel by Gene Freese (2020)
Maybe one of the reasons why actor Robert Mitchum looked so comfortable and at home in western movies, was the fact that he bred horses, preferred the casual cowboy outfit off the film set, and seemingly simply played himself, whenever he took the part of the cowboy, the Sheriff, the outlaw or the weather-beaten stranger […]
Urban Noir: New York and Los Angeles in Shadow and Light by James J. Ward and Cynthia J. Miller (eds...
Both Los Angeles and New York City have been of particular interest to movie producers, especially to those who shot drama that was later called film noir. The authors want to dig deeper to unearth the reasons for those locations, since the ”… inescapable question, then, is: Why this animosity toward the two cities that, […]