Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love

50+ new links added on February 27, 2011

The above is a short video primer by Catherine Grant. It offers an audiovisual introduction to issues of gender, sexuality and movement in relation to Rita Hayworth's performance as Gilda in Charles Vidor's 1946 film.

Private Property - Joseph Losey's The Prowler by Matt Zoller Seitz 
at The L Magazine, March 2010
(also see Justin Stewart's essay on this film in the same issue)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to present its own contribution to the remarkable fundraising effort for the Film Noir Foundation that has been taking place in the last week, namely the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blog-a-thon, organised by film critics Farran Smith Nehme (Self-Styled Siren) and Marilyn Ferdinand (of Ferdy on Film).

Awed by the contributions so far, FSFF proffers (above) a little video-primer on its favourite noir - Gilda - together with a reposting of Matt Zoller Seitz's fabulous audiovisual essay on The Prowler (also above), and a whole host of direct links (below) to openly accessible scholarly reading and viewing on Film Noir, and on all varieties of Neo-Noir, too - taken altogether, some of the most essential of film studies topics.

The Film Noir Foundation works to preserve and restore movies in its chosen mode from many eras and from many countries. The film nominated to be restored with monies raised this year is a fine and important noir called The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me) directed by Cy Endfield (1914–1995).

One of the resources FSFF links to is an excellent interview with Endfield, conducted in 1989 by Brian Neve, in which he discusses that film in the context of his career as a whole and the historical events which formed the background to his work. Here's what Endfield concludes about The Sound of Fury.

I consider that my talent for making pictures was best expressed in two pictures, Zulu and The Sound of Fury. I think the one big talent I have is to make big pictures. There is a sense of structure about something of dimension that I have found lacking even in pictures that were supposed to be big. [...] The Sound of Fury was made mostly from my blood circulation and nervous system. 

FSFF knows that feeling only too well! It can't wait to see the restored film. So, please, if you love Film Noir, join this blog's author in donating some of your hard-earned dough (or even some of your ill-begotten gains...) on this occasion. Just click here. Thank you!

• New Jason Ambrosiano, '"The Ties That Bind and Bless the Soul": Grace and Noir in Schrader's Light Sleeper', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998

• John Belton, 'Film Noir's Knights of the Road', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 54, November 2006

• New Jamaluddin Bin Aziz, 'Future Noir', Crimeculture, Summer 2005

• New John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008

• New Zoe Bolton, 'Entertainment and Dystopia: Film Noir, Melodrama and Mildred Pierce', Crimeculture, 2005

• David Bordwell, 'Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce',  Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Vol. VI, No. 2, Spring 1992

•  Dominique Bregent-Heald, 'Dark Limbo: Film Noir and the North American Borders', The Journal of American Culture, 29:2, 2006

• New Kurt Bullock, 'Vertical Apocalypse: Altered Noir Cityscape within Blade Runner’s Dystopia', SBCC.edu 

• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• New Tessa Chudy, 'Cinema: Noir: The Darkest Vision', M/C Reviews, November 4, 2004

• Angela Curran, ' Review of Dan Flory, Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir', Notre Dame Philosophical reviews, March 10, 2009

• 'Dossier: An Interview with Cy Endfield', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21

• Dan Flory, 'Introduction: Philosophy and the Blackness of Film Noir', Philosophy, Black Film08, Film Noir, Penn State University Press, 2008

• Dan Flory, 'The Epistemology of Race and Black American Film Noir: Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam as Lynching Parable', In: Film and knowledge: essays on the integration of images and ideas / edited by Kevin L. Stoehr. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002

• Vincent M. Gaine, '‘We’re on Flashdrive or CD-ROM’: Disassembly and Deletion in the Digital Noir of Collateral', Networking Knowledge, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009

• Saverio Giovacchini, 'Introduction: Taking Hollywood Seriously', Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Temple University Press, 2001)

• New John Hall, 'Touch of Psycho: Welles' Influence on Hitchcock', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 14, September 1995

• Daniel Herbert, Transnational film remakes: Time, space, identity, University of Southern California, PhD Thesis, 2008

• Ken Hillis , 'Film Noir and the American Dream: The Dark Side of Enlightenment', first published in Velvet Light Trap 55, Spring 2005 (1-18). Reprinted (2006) in Multicultural Film: Essays, Pearson Publishing

• New Katharine and Lee Horsley, ‘Mere Fatales: Maternal Guilt in the Noir Crime Novel’,
  Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999) 369-402

• New Lee Horsley, 'Fatal Women in the Hard-Boiled Fifties' An extract from The Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001; 2009)

• New Images Journal Special Issue (No. 2): 10 Shades of Noir, including essays on The Big Heat; The Big Sleep; The Big Combo; Double Indemnity; Force of Evil; Gun Crazy; Lady from Shanghai; Pickup On South Street; Shadow of a Doubt; Sweet Smell of Success; Some Additional Choice Noirs.

• New Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 10 (3), 2004: Special Issue on crime cinema and television, including essays on Deep Cover, NYPD Blue and Law and Order, among others.

• D.B. Jones, 'Review of Wheeler Winston Dixon, Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia', Screening the Past, Issue 25, 2009

• New Edvin Kau, 'Great Beginnings and Endings. Made by Orson Welles." P.O.V. , Issue 2, Nov. 1996

• New Matthew Kennedy, 'On Commies, Stoolies, and Other Assorted Lowlifes', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 44, May 2004

• New Naomi King, ‘Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine’, Crimeculture, 2002

• John Kraniauskas, 'Noir into history James Ellroy’s Blood’s a Rover', Radical Philosophy 163 (September/October 2010)

• Jennifer E. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)

• Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, 'Negotiating the Studio System: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Anti-Fascism in Cornered', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• New Scott Loren, 'Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir', European Journal of American Studies, 1, 2008

• New Michael Mills,  'High Heels on a Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale', Modern Times (date unknown)
  

• New Richard Misek, 'Wrong Geometries in The Third Man', Rouge, No. 11, July 2007

• Gary Morris, 'Film Noir.",' In: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2002

• New Gary Morris, 'Out of the Past: A noir classic revisited', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 29, July 2000

• Brian Neve, 'The Hollywood Left: Robert Rossen and Postwar Hollywood', Film Studies Volume 7, Winter 2005, pp 54-65

• John S. Nelson, 'Four Forms for Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003

• John S. Nelson, 'Realism as a Political Style: Noir Insights', Poroi, 5, 2, November, 2008

• Stanley Orr, 'Connected Guys: The Reconstructed Subject of 1990s Film Noir', in Darkly perfect world: colonial adventure, postmodernism, and American noir (Ohio State University, 2010) scroll down in PDF to p. 198

• Chris Pallant , 'Review: Mark T. Conrad, ed. (2007) The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• New Bryan D. Palmer, 'Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness',  Left History 1997

• Fred Pfeil, 'Revolting Yet Conserved: Family "Noir" in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2', Postmodern Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1992

• Brock Poulin, 'Dark time (s): non-linear narratives in the postmodern film noir', Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, April 2005

• Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993

• Robert J. Read,  The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University, 2003

• Nathaniel Rich,  "San Francisco in Film Noir,", Conversations with History, 6/23/05 (direct video link here)

• David Ross-Gerling, 'Spanish Cinema Noir and Novela Negra: A Case Study on Racial Profiling',  (scroll to p. 1263 in PDF), History and Civil Rights Monograph, Vol. 11

• New José Luis Sánchez Noriega, 'Psychoanalytical Culture in the American Film Noir', Journal of Medicine and Movies, No. 4, 2008

• Torben Schmidt, 'Christopher Nolan’s Memento – Analysis of the narrative structure of a noirish revenge film', Seminar: “Decadence and Modernism in Late 20th Century American Cinema, 2003

• New Alain Silver, 'Introduction', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• New Alain Silver, 'Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a Style', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996) (Go to Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of A Style, Part Two)

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Past Sunset: Noir in the West', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 66, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Plumbing the Depths of Capitalism: On Force of Evil', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 62, November 2008

• Peter Stanfield, 'A Monarch for the Millions: Jewish Filmmakers, Social Commentary and the Postwar Cycle of Boxing Films', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Peter Stanfield, 'Review of Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity', Film Studies, Vol. 6, Summer 2005 (Scroll down in PDF)

• New Scott F. Stoddart, '"Queer Eye" for a "Straight Dick": Contextualized Homosexuals in Film Noir', MLA Convention, Philadelphia, 2004

• Stephen Swanson, The Stranger inthe Dark: the Ethics of Levinasian-Derridean Hospitality in Noir, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2007

• Grant Tracey, 'Force of Evil' (10 Shades of Noir) Images, Issue 2 (scroll down for full index)

• New Anja Christine Rørnes Tucker,  "Teen Noir" A Study of the Recent Film Noir Revival in the Teen Genre, MA Thesis, University of Bergen, 2008

• Jans B. Wager, 'Percolating Paranoia: Fritz Lang's The Big Heat', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 27, January 2000

• New Elizabeth Ward, 'The Post-Noir P.I.: The Long Goodbye and Hickey and Boggs', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• Deborah Walker, 'Re-reading the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: an evolutionary perspective', The Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 5, No. 6

• New Nancy West and Penelope Pelizzon, 'Snap Me Deadly: Reading the Still Photograph in Film Noir', American Studies, 43:2, 2002

• New Emma Whiting, 'Dangerous Women and the Abject in the Noir Thriller', Crimeculture, 2005

Note: The first video essay (by Catherine Grant) embedded at the top of this post was made according to principles of Fair Use/Fair Dealing, primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in February 2011. If you found this video or FSFF's Film Noir entry useful or enjoyable, please consider supporting with a donation the valuable work of the Film Noir Foundation. Thank you.