Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir

by Andrew Dickos

Overview

Andrew Dickos's Street with No Name traces the film noir genre back to its roots in German expressionist cinema and the French cinema of the interwar years. Dickos describes the development of the film noir in America from 1941 through the 1970s and examines how this development expresses a modern cinema. He argues that, in its most satisfying form, the film noir exists as a series of conventions with an iconography and characters of distinctive significance. Featuring stylized lighting and urban settings, these films tell melodramatic narratives involving characters who commit crimes predicated on destructive passions, corruption, and a submission to human weakness and fate.

Unlike other studies of the noir, Street with No Name follows its development in a loosely historical style that associates certain noir directors with those features in their films that helped define the scope of the genre. Dickos examines notable directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Robert Siodmak. He also charts the genre's influence on such celebrated postwar French filmmakers as Jean-Pierre Melville, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard.

Addressing the aesthetic, cultural, political, and social concerns depicted in the genre, Street with No Name demonstrates how the film noir generates a highly expressive, raw, and violent mood as it exposes the ambiguities of modern postwar society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813137490
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Andrew Dickos is the author of Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges and the Movies and Honor among Thieves: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville. He is also the editor of Abraham Polonsky: Interviews. He is a commentator on Paramount Home Entertainment's DVD of Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and contributed film noir content to the Columbia World of Quotations. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

To Name the Thing-Film Noir as Style, as Genre 1

German Expressionism and the Roots of the Film Noir 9

Fritz Lang 20

Robert Siodmak 34

The Inception of the Film Noir in the French Cinema of the 1930s 42

The Film Noir in France in the Immediate Postwar Years 51

1 The Noir in America 60

The Noir City 62

Archetypes-Protagonists 65

Abraham Polonsky 70

Jules Dassin 75

Nicholas Ray 82

Orson Welles 88

2 The Hard-Boiled Fiction Influence 96

Cornell Woolrich 99

The Private Detective 103

Humphrey Bogart, Spade, Marlowe, and the Film Noir 109

The Gangster Figure and the Noir 112

John Huston 115

Violence in the Noir 121

Samuel Fuller 125

Robert Aldrich 130

Don Siegel 137

Sexuality in the Noir 142

Families in the Noir 146

Joseph H. Lewis 151

3 Women as Seen m the Film Noir 156

Otto Preminger 164

4 Noir Production 172

Noir Iconography 173

The Use of Voice-Over Narration 177

The Flashback Device 179

Amnesia as a Storytelling Device 182

The B Noir Production 184

Documentary Realism in the Noir 187

Critical and Popular Reception of the Film Noir 191

HUAC and the Blacklist 194

Fight Pictures 197

Caper Films 200

Crime Syndicate Exposés 202

The Kefauver Crime Hearings 203

Anthony Mann 206

Phil Karlson 213

5 The Noir Influence on the French New Wave 222

Jean-Pierre Melville 228

Epilogue: Comments on the Classic Film Noir and the Neo-Noir 235

Appendix: Credits of Selected Films Noirs 245

Notes 271

Bibliography 283

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

What do Alexander the Great and film noir have in common? Both subjects invariably spur the writing of first-class books. While not as comprehensive as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Dickos's work skillfully plumbs this "dark cinema," a style (genre to some, crime subgenre to others) that is recognized in such recent productions as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento (2001) but whose heyday resides between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958). Dickos (Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges and the Movies) does not neglect noir's roots in post-World War I German silent cinema and 1930s French sound films. He targets directors (from migr s Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger to American-born Nicholas Ray and Don Siegel), settings (especially the city), protagonists (pursued and pursuer), plot devices (amnesia, flashbacks), and specific films (Body and Soul, The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly, and many more). The movie stills have been carefully chosen; a useful bibliography and credits for selected films are furnished as well. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

What do Alexander the Great and film noir have in common? Both subjects invariably spur the writing of first-class books. While not as comprehensive as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Dickos's work skillfully plumbs this "dark cinema," a style (genre to some, crime subgenre to others) that is recognized in such recent productions as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento (2001) but whose heyday resides between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958). Dickos (Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges and the Movies) does not neglect noir's roots in post-World War I German silent cinema and 1930s French sound films. He targets directors (from migr s Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger to American-born Nicholas Ray and Don Siegel), settings (especially the city), protagonists (pursued and pursuer), plot devices (amnesia, flashbacks), and specific films (Body and Soul, The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly, and many more). The movie stills have been carefully chosen; a useful bibliography and credits for selected films are furnished as well. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A concrete, concise study of noir against an impressive historical vista that brings to light the complex relation between alienation and obsession that makes up these films.

Rain Taxi Review

Dickos provides a sharp critical and psychological evaluation of a genre that continues to mutate long after many pronounced it dead.

Shepherd Express

"Dickos spins a good web for film noir addicts."—Culture Vulture

From the Publisher

The best book available on the genre of movies set in the dark, wet streets of the urban US.

Choice