Skip to main content

Perplexing Plots. Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder by David Bordwell (2023)

Generally, storytelling, narratives, modes of presentation and the story behind them, define most works of fiction and movie plots alike. As those techniques changed over the decades (as did audiences who step by step were introduced to this), new and exiting ways of shooting film and presenting characters entered popular forms of entertainment. The simple, […]

The Essence of Film Noir: The Style and Themes of Cinema’s Dark Genre by Diana Royer (2022)

Part of the unique intensity of noir and neo-noir movies is rooted in the combination of masterful scripts, extraordinary directors and the skillful highlighting of the psychological aspects wherever a protagonist needs to take action. But often is sabotaged while trying, to simplify one of many film noir plots. By carefully investigating the genre, several […]

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 […]

Law Enforcement in American Cinema, 1894-1952 by George Beck (2020)

In this short title, author George Beck takes a close look at some movies of the first half of the twentieth century that employed representations of American law enforcement, starting with silent era productions and chronologically end with films noir. Five sections altogether and a final coda chapter on roughly 130 pages consider stereotypes, good […]