Research Guides: Film Genres: Topics in Film Noir

Exploring the Film Noir Genre

The aim of this topics page is to introduce readings on the Film Noir discourse. The literature on Film Noir spans across periods, nations, subgenres, and disciplines. This guide is aiming to shed light on these different lenses from which scholars have examined Film Noir - National Cinemas, Gender and Race, Literary Influences, and Neo-Noir. Each section will include a curated list of scholarly literature to prompt research focus and applicable search tips to streamline your research process.

Many thanks to Brian Tin, CSI undergraduate student and Innis College Library Assistant, for crafting this list (Fall 2023).

If you have more questions:

Key Texts

Early Assessments

A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953) by Raymond Borde; Etienne Chaumeton; Paul Hammond (Translator)
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 B6713 2002
Publication Date: 2002-11-01
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.
Durgnat, Raymond. “Paint it Black: The Family Tree of the Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader. Edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, 37–51. New York: Limelight, 1998. by Alain Silver; James Ursini
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 F57 1996
Publication Date: 2004-08-01
One of the first English-language articulation of Film Noir in the 70s, Durgnat's essay is important because of the foundational framework it laid for future scholars of Noir.
Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader. Edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, 53–63. New York: Limelight, 1998. by Alain Silver; James Ursini
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 F57 1996
Publication Date: 2004-08-01
Famous American screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, First Reformed) established key characteristics of Film Noir for the first time in English in this important article from the 1970s.

General Overview

Dark Side of the Screen by Foster Hirsch
Call Number: PN1995.9 .G3 H5 2001
Publication Date: 2001-04-19
SinceThe Dark Side of the Screen first appeared two decades ago, when filmnoir was still a little-known group of dark, brooding postwar B-movies, it has become the essential take on what has become one of today's most pervasive screen influences and popular genres. Covering over a hundred outstanding films and offering nearly two hundred carefully chosen stills, this is by far the most thorough and entertaining study available ofnoir themes, visual motifs, character types, actors, and directors. Hirsch examines the features that make Burt Lancaster, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart intonoir icons; as well as the camera angles, lighting effects, and story lines that characterize the work of such majornoir directors as Fritz Lag, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles. With a complete list of credits to 112 films and a new introduction, Hirsch's work remains the classic analysis of the most original genre of American cinema.
More Than Night by James Naremore
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 N37 1998
ISBN: 0520212932
Publication Date: 1998-10-16
Naremore discusses film noir as a term in criticism; as an expression of artistic modernism; as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics in the 1940s; as a market strategy; as an evolving style; as a cinema about races and nationalities; and as an idea that circulates across all the information technologies. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book has valuable things to say not only about film and television, but also about modern literature, the fine arts, and popular culture in general. In a field where much of what has been published is superficial and derivative, Naremore's work is certain to be received as a definitive treatment.
Voices in the Dark by J. P. Telotte
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 T44 1989
Publication Date: 1988-12-01
The American film noir, the popular genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940s and 1950s, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and , in doing so, created unique narrative structures in order to speak of that darkness. J.P. Telotte's in-depth discussion of classic films noir--including The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady in the Lake, Dark Passage, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and Murder, My Sweet--draws on the work of Michel Foucault to examine four dominant noir narrative strategies.

Neo-noir

Detours and Lost Highways : A Map of Neo-Noir by Foster Hirsch
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 H57 1999
Publication Date: 1999
Hirsch demonstrates how neo-noir has reflected changes in contemporary life from film technology to social values. Relentlessly mobile camerawork, multilayered soundtracks and lush colors now work to create dark stories that tell of growing cynicism about government, distrust of the press, tensions in gender politics and in race relations.
The Philosophy of Neo-Noir by Mark T. Conard
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 P56 2007
Publication Date: 2009-02-20
Conard argues that the films discussed in The Philosophy of Neo-Noir convey ambiguity, disillusionment, and disorientation more effectively than even the most iconic films of the classic noir era. Able to self-consciously draw upon noir conventions and simultaneously subvert them, neo-noir directors push beyond the earlier genre's limitations and open new paths of cinematic and philosophical exploration.
Perspectives on Film Noir by R. Barton Palmer
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 P47 1996
ISBN: 0816116016
Publication Date: 1996
With the revived use of film noir by such contemporary directors as Scorsese, Altman, and the Coen brothers, there has been heightened public and academic interest in the film noir as a genre movement and style. In this Perspectives volume, French theories of film noir are discussed with translations of key book reviews, essays and articles. Anglo-American theory and criticism - especially scholarship from the 1980s - illuminates social, literary and philosophical contexts of film noir in the 1940s, and the revival of its themes, style and subject matters in the 1970s and 1980s.

Film Noir in National Cinemas

European Noir

British Film Noir Guide by Michael F. Keaney
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 K427 2008X
Publication Date: 2008-03-05
This reference work makes a case for the inclusion of the British films in the film noir canon, which is still considered by some to be an exclusively American inventory. The book's main section features a quote from the film, the title and release date, a rating based on the five-star system, and much more.
Film Noir by Jennifer Fay; Justus Nieland
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 F39 2010
Publication Date: 2009-12-04
The authors examine how film noir crosses national boundaries, speaks to diverse international audiences, and dramatizes local crimes and the crises of local spaces in the face of global phenomena like world-wide depression, war, political occupation, economic and cultural modernization, decolonization, and migration. This fresh study of film noir and global culture also discusses film noir's heterogeneous style and revises important scholarly debates about this perpetually alluring genre.
French Film Noir by Robin Buss
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 B87 1994
ISBN: 9780714529639
Publication Date: 2001-04-01
From the seething internal aftermath of the German Occupation to the stylish radicalism of the New Wave and the slick post-modern fantasies of today, French directors such as Melville, Becker, Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol have adapted American crime movie conventions to create their own cinema of good and evil.

East Asian Noir

East Asian Film Noir by Chi-Yun Shin (Editor); Mark Gallagher (Editor)
Publication Date: 2015-03-20
Film noir has been understood as a genre exclusive to Hollywood. But classical US noir's downbeat sensibility also finds expression in later films from Japan, South Korea and China (including Hong Kong) and Taiwan, that have both participated in and been excluded from circuits of global-noir traffic, past and present. East Asian Film Noir is the first book to explore these films and the filmmakers who made them. Looking at a range of examples from the 1950s to the present - including The Crimson Kimono, Brother, Ghost in the Shell, Nowhere to Hide, Duelist- and Rebels of the Neon God - this work conceptualizes and articulates an internationally situated 'East Asian film noir'. In doing so, it raises fascinating questions around the politics of representation, authorial activity, genre and local and cross-cultural reception.
Hong Kong Dark Cinema by Kim-Mui E. Elaine Chan
Publication Date: 2019-12-10
This book is the first major scholarly investigation of the historical development and contemporary transformation of film noir in today's Hong Kong. Focusing on the evolvement of cinematic narratives, aesthetics, and techniques, the author balances a deep reading of the multiple filmic plots with a refreshing discussion of the cinematic portrayals of gender, romance, identities and power relations. This book also revisits conceptual categories developed by Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Butler.

National Cinemas

Locating Nordic Noir by Anne Marit Waade; Kim Toft Hansen
Call Number: PN1992.3 .S34 H36 2017 SMC
Publication Date: 2017-10-27
This book is a comprehensive study of Nordic Noir television drama from the 1990's until today. The authors introduce the history of contemporary Nordic Noir from the perspective of place, production and location studies. The chapters include readings of well-known television crime dramas such as Beck, The Killing, Trapped and The Bridge as well as a range of other important Nordic Noir cases. The authors position the development of Nordic Noir in the global market for popular television drama and place the international attention towards Nordic crime dramas within regional development of drama production in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Consequently, Nordic Noir is read as both a transnational financial and creative phenomenon and as a local possibility for community building. Offering a comprehensible, scholarly and methodologically original approach to the popularity of Nordic television crime dramas, this volume is aimed at readers with an in terest in crime drama as well as scholars and students of television drama.
International Noir by Homer B. Pettey (Editor); R. Barton Palmer (Editor)
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F54 I58 2014
Publication Date: 2014-11-11
Following World War II, film noir became the dominant cinematic expression of Cold War angst, influencing new trends in European and Asian filmmaking. International Noir examines film noir's influence on the cinematic traditions of Britain, France, Scandinavia, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and India. This book suggests that the film noir style continues to appeal on such a global scale because no other cinematic form has merged style and genre to effect a vision of the disturbing consequences of modernity. International noir has, however, adapted and adopted noir themes and aesthetic elements so that national cinemas can boast an independent and indigenous expression of the genre. Ranging from Japanese silent films and women's films to French, Hong Kong, and Nordic New Waves, this book also calls into question critical assessments of noir in international cinemas. In short, it challenges prevailing film scholarship to renegotiate the concept of noir. Ending with an examination of Hollywood's neo-noir recontextualization of the genre, and post-noir's reinvigorating critique of this aesthetic, International Noir offers Film Studies scholars an in-depth commentary on this influential global cinematic art form, further offering extensive bibliography and filmographies for recommended reading and viewing.