Book description
With the advent of the Second World War a new mood was discernible in
film drama - an atmosphere of disillusion and a sense of foreboding, a
dark quality that derived as much from the characters depicted as from
the cinematographer's art. These films, among them such classics as
Double Indemnity, The Woman in the Window, Touch of Evil and sunset
Boulevard, emerged retrospectively as a genre in themselves when a
French film critic referred to them collectively as film noir.
Bruce Crowther looks into noir's literary origins (often in the
novels of the so-called 'hard-boiled' school typified by Raymond
Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich), and at how the
material translated to the screen, noting in particular influences
from German expressionist films and the almost indispensable
techniques of flashback and voice-over narration.
He also assesses the contribution made by the players - by actors
such as Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Alan Ladd and John Garfield and
actresses such as Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, Joan Crawford and
Gloria Grahame, together with a roll-call of supporting players whose
screen presence could lend almost any film the noir imprimatur.
Noir was in its heyday from 1945 to 1955, a time when paranoia and
disillusion, anxiety and violence could be said to have been part of
the fabric of American, and particularly Hollywood, society, yet its
impact and its influence are with us still - in films as diverse as
The French Connection, Chinatown and Body Heat. This Book commemorates
a special period in film-making and a unique combination of talent
resulting in a spectrum of films that are as welcome today on their
small-screen airings as they were when first shown in cinema.
BRUCE CROWTHER, who lives in Yorkshire, is the author of many books
including a series of novels under his own name and under the pseudonyms
James Grant and Michael Ansara. His most recent non-fiction titles for
Columbus include Charlton Heston: the epic presence, Laurel and Hardy:
Clown Princes of Comedy, and Bring Me Laughter, a survey of four decades
of television comedy. His main interest outside books and the movies is
jazz.
