A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953)

by Raymond Borde, Etienne Chaumeton, Paul Hammond (Translator)

Overview

When it appeared in France in 1955, A Panorama of American Film Noir was the first book ever on the genre: this clairvoyant study of Hollywood film noir is at last available in English translation.

A Panorama of American Film Noir addresses the essential amorality of its subject from a decidedly Surrealist angle, focusing on noir's dreamlike, unwonted, erotic, ambivalent and cruel atmosphere, and setting it in the social context of mid-century America.

Beginning with the first film noir, The Maltese Falcon, and continuing through the post war "glory days," which included such films as Gilda, The Big Sheep, Dark Passage and The Lady from Shanghai, Borde and Chaumeton examine the dark sides of American society, film and literature that made film noir possible, even necessary.

A Panorama of American Film Noir includes a film noir chronology, a voluminous filmography, a comprehensive index and a selection of black-and-white production stills.

"Incredibly, this is the first English translation of the very influential 1955 French book that initially identified, described and assessed the Hollywood movies that we now term film noir . . . a seminal work of cinema description and analysis and therefore an essential purchase for most libraries."—From the Starred Review in Library Journal

Raymond Borde (1920 - 2004), founder of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, wrote extensively on film history; among his short films is a study of the artist Pierre Molinier.

Etienne Chaumeton was the film critic of the Toulouse newspaper La Dépêche until his death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872864122
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	11/01/2002
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

	A Season in Hell or the Snows of Yesteryear?	vii
	Preface	xxiii
1	Introduction	1
	The "noir series"
	The series idea
	A preliminary convention
2	Toward a definition of film noir	5
	The crime adventure story
	Psychological ambiguity
	Moral ambivalence
	The theme of violence
	The strange
	The disappearance of psychological bearings and a specific sense of malaise
3	The sources of film noir	15
	Literature
	Psychoanalysis
	The social context and the influence of the war
	European sources
	Gangster and horror films, and the cartoon
4	The war years and the formation of a style (1941-1945)	29
	1941, a pivotal year in Hollywood
	The Maltese Falcon
	The Shanghai Gesture
	This Gun for Hire
	The contributions of Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Curtis Bernhardt, and Fritz Lang
	The rallying of academicism
	The "noirified" period film
5	The glory days (1946-1948)	53
	The end of the war and its consequences
	1946: Gilda, The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake
	1947: The Lady from Shanghai, Dark Passage
	1948: Sorry, Wrong Number, Ride the Pink Horse
	Minor productions
	Films about criminal psychology
	Hitchcock's oeuvre
	Police documentaries, and gangster and prison films
6	Decadence and transformation (1949-1950)	83
	Film noir's integration in adjacent series: He Walked by Night, The Enforcer, White Heat
	Three successful Elia Kazan, Jules Dassin, and John Huston films
	A noir version of amour fou: Gun Crazy
7	The demise of a series (1951-1953)	97
	New series: science-fiction, anti-Communist films, and the myth of the "thinking cop"
	Macao and the return of Sternberg
	Strangers on a Train
	The neorealist detective film
	A poetic transposition of the noir series: The Band Wagon
8	Influences	113
	Noir's influence on the feature-length social documentary: Crossfire, Thieves' Highway, The Set-Up
	The psychoanalytical series
	Parodies and cartoons
	European film noirs
9	French film noirs	127
10	A balance sheet	139
	The validity of cinema criticism and its methods
	A technical assessment of the noir series
	Eroticism of the thriller
	Moral questions
	The role of violence
	A psychosocial balance sheet
	Net assets and liabilities
	A season in hell
	Postface	155
	Chronological index of the main series	161
	Filmography	165
	Index	229

Editorial Reviews

Incredibly, this is the first English translation of the very influential 1955 French book that initially identified, described and assessed the Hollywood movies that we now term film noir . . . a seminal work of cinema description and analysis and therefore an essential purchase for most libraries.
—Starred Review in Library Journal

Incredibly, this is the first English translation of the very influential 1955 French book that initially identified, described, and assessed the Hollywood movies that we now term film noir-or dark cinema-films in which the "final stake is death." With terse, catching turns of phrase (e.g., "inevitably doomed this experiment to semifailure," regarding 1946's Lady in the Lake), esteemed film critics Borde and Chaumeton extract the essence of many film noirs and discuss the genre's influences on other film types. Included are a chapter on French film noirs, the authors' 1979 film Postface, and, in addition to a filmography, a chronological list of important titles within categories (e.g., "Film Noirs," "Criminal Psychology," "Crime Films in Period Costume," "Gangsters," "Police Documentaries," and "Social Tendencies"). Like such studies as Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By, David Pirie's A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema, 1946-1972, and Ethan Mordden's Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s, this is a seminal work of cinema description and analysis and therefore an essential purchase for most libraries.-Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal