The Heist Film: Stealing with Style

by Daryl Lee

Overview

A concise introduction to the genre about that one last big score, The Heist Film: Stealing With Style traces this crime thriller's development as both a dramatic and comic vehicle growing out of film noir (Criss Cross, The Killers, The Asphalt Jungle), mutating into sleek capers in the 1960s (Ocean's Eleven, Gambit, How to Steal a Million) and splashing across screens in the 2000s in remake after remake (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, The Good Thief). Built around a series of case studies (Rififi, Bob le Flambeur, The Killing, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Getaway, the Ocean's trilogy), this volume explores why directors of such varied backgrounds, from studio regulars (Siodmak, Crichton, Siegel, Walsh and Wise) to independents (Anderson, Fuller, Kubrick, Ritchie and Soderbergh), are so drawn to this popular genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231850582
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/14/2014
Series:	Short Cuts
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Daryl Lee is Associate Professor of French at Brigham Young University where he teaches courses on nineteenth-century French lyric poetry, the city, and urban culture in film, literature, and film theory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Heist as Genre
1. Origins: The Noir Heist
2. Foundations: The Noir Heist and its Satire as Aesthetic Parables
3. Conventions: The Heist Adapts its Message
4. Returns: Perpetuating the Myth of Originality in the Remake
Select Filmography
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The most sustained analysis of this neglected genre to date. This volume lifts the big caper or heist film from the generic limbo in which it has for too long languished. It deftly demonstrates the heist film's dual generic function as anti-insititution social message and as ongoing address about the place of art in society.

Barry Keith Grant