More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts

More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts

by JNaremore (Author)

Synopsis

Film noir evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and 1950s -melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. In More Than Night , James Naremore discusses these pictures, but he also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. Film noir refers both to an important cinematic legacy and to an idea we have projected onto the past. This lively, wide-ranging cultural history offers an original approach to the subject, as well as new production information and fresh commentary on scores of films, including such classics as Double Indemnity , The Third Man , and Out of the Past , and such neo noirs as Chinatown , Pulp Fiction , and Devil in a Blue Dress .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.

$3.48

Save:$16.60 (83%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 342
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 09 Oct 1998

ISBN 10: 0520212940
ISBN 13: 9780520212947

Media Reviews
Naremore's program is to insistently complicate the long-standing debate over the boundaries and characteristics of Hollywood's most infiltrative and self-conscious genre. His book works. . . . More than Nights is structured like Kurosawa's Rashomon, as a series of views onto aspects of an impossible elusive story. -- Bookforum
Author Bio
James Naremore is Chancellors' Professor of English, Communication and Culture, and Film Studies at Indiana University. His books include Acting in the Cinema (California, 1988), The Films of Vincente Minnelli (1994), and The Magic World of Orson Welles (1990).