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No Daylight in That Face
Adventures in Film Noir
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Book Presentation:
Out of print for years and newly retitled and expanded, this deluxe new edition of Gifford's celebrated handbook unlocks the secrets of noir movies and their relevance today
For a tour of noir cinema, No Daylight in this Face is the perfect companion, and Barry Gifford is an ideal guide. His choice selection of films exposes the menacing, moody, and oftentimes violent underbelly of this dark movie genre that occupies a favorite niche in American popular culture.
Some are classics, some are little known and seldom seen, but all, once viewed, are deeply remembered by aficionados of noir. Gifford's roll call of unforgettables includes these, and more: The Asphalt Jungle, Body and Soul, Body Heat, Charley Varrick, Chinatown, The Devil Thumbs a Ride, D.O.A., Double Indemnity, High Sierra, Key Largo, Kiss of Death, Mean Streets, Mildred Pierce, Mr. Majestyk, Out of the Past, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Strangers on a Train, White Heat, along with several noir classics from Europe―Repulsion, The Hidden Room, Shoot the Piano Player, The 400 Blows, Odd Man Out.
Gifford identifies the directors and names the many noir stars, the greats and not-so-greats who were cast in the indelible roles of hoods, B-girls, psychopaths, grifters, gumshoes, waifs, tarts, femme fatales, mobsters, molls, and ex-cons.
In an introduction, novelists Edward Gorman and Dow Mossman collaboratively applaud Gifford's selections and his insights: “The movies discussed here range from the lowest of the B's to the biggest of the A's, and this book is going to make you want to run out and locate every one of them (and good luck to you; finding The Devil Thumbs a Ride could take you a lifetime). Through Barry Gifford's eyes, we begin to see their similarities and their value. What Andrew Sarris did for the mainstream film in The American Cinema, Barry does here for the crime film.”
With a connoisseur's insight and an offbeat sensitivity perfectly tailored to his subjects, Gifford's brief essays cover a hundred of the noir buff's favorites. His highly polished impressions take the reader through five decades of noir to find both the heart and the art of the plotline.
About the Author:
Barry Gifford is the author of more than forty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the acclaimed Sailor and Lula novels (one of which was adapted into David Lynch's 1990 Palme d'Or-winning film Wild at Heart). Gifford has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, The American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Edward Gorman is an award-winning American author best known for his crime and mystery fiction. He wrote The Poker Club, which is now a film of the same name directed by Tim McCann. He has written under many pseudonyms including "E. J. Gorman" and "Daniel Ransom." He won a Spur Award for Best Short Fiction for his short story "The Face" in 1992. His fiction collection, Cages, was nominated for the 1995 Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. His collection, The Dark Fantastic, was nominated for the same award in 2001. He has contributed to many magazines and other publications including Xero, Black Lizard, Cemetery Dance, the anthology Tales of Zorro, and many more.Dow Mossman is the author of The Stones of Summer, originally published in 1972 by Bobbs-Merrill, and Popular Library a year later. Following publication of the novel, Mossman was mentally exhausted and spent several months in an Iowa sanitarium. The novel soon went out of print, but in 2002, Mossman became the subject of the documentary film Stone Reader by Mark Moskowitz, which chronicled the director's attempt to resuscitate the acclaimed book and speak to its seemingly vanished author. After the film's release, The Stones of Summer was reissued by Barnes & Noble, and Mossman is now semi-retired living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Press Reviews:
"Gifford knows his noir. The essays are better than some of the films he writes about."
—Elmore Leonard
See the publisher website: Rare Bird Books
Previous edition
Out of the Past (2000)
Adventures in Film Noir
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
(previous edition)
Subject: Genre
> From the same author:
The Cavalry Charges (2019)
Writings on Books, Film, and Music, Revised Edition
Subject: Others persons > Barry Gifford
> On a related topic:
Minding Movies (2011)
Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking
by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Subject: General
Screen Writings (2010)
Volume 1: Partial Views of a Total Art, Classic to Contemporary
Subject: Film Analysis
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