This first book published on film noir established the genre--a classic, at last in translation.

The first edition of 'Women in Film Noir' (1978) assembled a group of scholars and critics committed to understanding the cinema in terms of gender, sexuality, politics, psychoanalysis and semiotics. This edition is expanded to include further essays which reflect the renewed interest in Film Noir. Exploring 'neo-noir', postmodernism and other contemporary trends, new essays offer readings of, among others, 'Bound' and 'Basic Instinct', broadening the scope of the book to include questions of race and homosexuality.

Film noir, one of the most intriguing yet difficult to define terms in cinema history, is usually associated with a series of darkly seductive Hollywood thrillers from the 1940s and 50s - shadowy, black-and-white pictures about private eyes, femme fatales, outlaw lovers, criminal heists, corrupt police, and doomed or endangered outsiders. But as this VSI demonstrates, film noir actually predates the 1940s and has never been confined to Hollywood. International in scope, its various manifestations have spread across generic categories, attracted the interest of the world's great directors, and continue to appear even today. In this Very Short Introduction James Naremore shows how the term film noir originated in in French literary and film criticism, and how later uses of the term travelled abroad, changing its implications. In the process, he comments on classic examples of the films and explores important aspects of their history: their critical reception, their major literary sources, their methods of dealing with censorship and budgets, their social and cultural politics, their variety of styles, and their future in a world of digital media and video streaming. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Long considered an unpolished gem of film noir, the private treasure of film buffs, cinephiles and critics, Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945) has recently earned a new wave of recognition. In the words of film critic David Thomson, it is simply 'beyond remarkable.' The only B-picture to make it into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, Detour has outrun its fate as the bastard child of one of Hollywood's lowliest studios. Ulmer's film follows, in flashback, the journey of Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a pianist hitching from New York to California to join his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a singer gone to seek her fortune in Hollywood. In classic noir style, Detour features mysterious deaths, changes of identity, an unforgettable femme fatale called Vera (Ann Savage), and, in Roberts, a wretched, masochistic antihero. Noah Isenberg's study of Detour draws on a vast array of archival sources, unpublished letters and interviews, to provide an animated and thorough account of the film's production history, its critical reception, its afterlife (including various remakes) and the different ways in which the film has been understood since its release. He devotes significant attention to each of the key players in the film – the crew as well as the principal actors – while charting the uneasy transformation of Martin Goldsmith's pulp novel into Ulmer's signature film, the disagreements between the director and writer, and the severe financial and formal limitations with which Ulmer grappled. The story that Isenberg tells, rich in historical and critical insight, replicates the briskness of a B-movie.

The first book to treat issues of race and ethnicity as related to noir, offering a cultural history of twentieth-century America through episodic readings of films, photographs, and literature.

It is only in the editing studio that he possesses "absolute control." With scholarly erudition, Welles revels in the plays of Shakespeare and discusses their adaptation to stage and screen. He assesses rival directors and eminent actors, offers penetrating analyses of Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, and The Third Man, and declares that he never made a film that lacked an ethical point-of-view. Book jacket.

"Examines how African-American as well as international films deploy film noir techniques in ways that encourage philosophical reflection. Combines philosophy, film studies, and cultural studies"--Provided by publisher.