Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Street with No Name
A History of the Classic American Film Noir
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Flourishing in the United States during the 1940s and 50s, the bleak, violent genre of filmmaking known as film noir reflected the attitudes of writers and auteur directors influenced by the events of the turbulent mid-twentieth century. Films such as Force of Evil, Night and the City, Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Heat, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly and, more recently, Chinatown and The Grifters are indelibly American. Yet the sources of this genre were found in Germany and France and imported to Hollywood by emigré filmmakers, who developed them and allowed a vibrant genre to flourish. Andrew Dickos's Street with No Name traces the film noir genre back to its roots in German Expressionist cinema and the French cinema of the interwar years. Dickos describes the development of the film noir in America from 1941 through the 1970s and examines how this development expresses a modern cinema. Dickos examines notable directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, John Huston, Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, Samuel Fuller, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, Anthony Mann and others. He also charts the genre's influence on such celebrated postwar French filmmakers as Jean-Pierre Melville, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard. Addressing the aesthetic, cultural, political, and social concerns depicted in the genre, Street with No Name demonstrates how the film noir generates a highly expressive, raw, and violent mood as it exposes the ambiguities of modern postwar society.
About the Author:
Andrew Dickos is the editor of Abraham Polonsky: Interviews and the author of Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges and the Movies. He is also a commentator on Paramount Home Entertainment's DVD of Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.
Press Reviews:
"Dickos spins a good web for film noir addicts."—Culture Vulture
"Traces classic American film noir back to its antecedents in German Expressionism and the Golden Age of French Cinema in the 1930s, which have not been given their due."—Gene D. Phillips, author of Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chander, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir
"Dickos's work skillfully plumbs this 'dark cinema,' a style that is recognized in such recent productions as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento (2001) but whose heyday resides between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958)."—Library Journal
"It is refreshing to see a book that shifts away from specific textual analysis and criticism to an historical focus. In so doing it not only reminds us of the vastness of the noir canon, but also the marginalization of many overlooked texts and directors."—Literature/Film Quarterly
"A concrete, concise study of noir against an impressive historical vista that brings to light the complex relation between alienation and obsession that makes up these films."—Rain Taxi Review
"Definitely stands among the better studies of the film genre."—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"The best book available on the genre of movies set in the dark, wet streets of the urban U.S."—Choice
"El autor analiza con acierto las caracteristícas del estilo y estructuras del 'cine negro.' La influencia del 'cine negro' sigue presente en el cine actual, por eso la lectura de un libro como Street with No Name resulta muy ú til."—Todo Sobre Cine
"Shrewdly analyzes those movies."—Wall Street Journal
See the publisher website: University Press of Kentucky
Newer edition
Street with No Name (2021)
A History of the Classic American Film Noir
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
> From the same author:
> On a related topic:
Street with No Name (2021)
A History of the Classic American Film Noir
The Gorgon's Gaze (1991)
German Cinema, Expressionism, and the Image of Horror
by Paul Coates, William Rothman and Dudley Andrew
Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination (2021)
Film Noir, the Western and Other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s
by Geoff Mayer
Subject: Genre > All Genres
Film, Cinema, Genre (2021)
The Steve Neale Reader
by Steve Neale, Frank Krutnik and Richard Maltby
Subject: Genre > All Genres
Back
