"Supplies the first study of film noir that achieves the sort of intellectual seriousness, depth of research, degree of critical insight, and level of writing that this group of films deserves."--Tom Gunning, Modernism and Modernity
Arouses memories of black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50s - melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. This book discusses these pictures, and also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. It also includes a chapter on film noir in the twenty-first century.