From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), the classic film noir is easily recognizable for its unusual lighting, sinister plots, and feeling of paranoia. For critics and fans alike, these films defined an era. The Philosophy of Film Noir explores philosophical themes and ideas inherent in classic noir and neo-noir films, establishing connections to diverse thinkers ranging from Camus to the Frankfurt School. The authors, each focusing on a different aspect of the genre, explore the philosophical underpinnings of classic films such as The Big Sleep (1946), Out of the Past (1947), and Pulp Fiction (1994). They show how existentialism and nihilism dominate the genre as they explore profound themes in a vital area of popular culture.

"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.

Film noir reflects the fatalistic themes and visual style of hard-boiled novelists and many émigré filmmakers in 1940s and 1950s America, emphasizing crime, alienation, and moral ambiguity. In The Philosophy of TV Noir, Steven M. Sanders and Aeon J. Skoble argue that the legacy of film noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Big Sleep is also found in episodic television from the mid-1950s to the present. In this first-of-its-kind collection, contributors from philosophy, film studies, and literature raise fundamental questions about the human predicament, giving this unique volume its moral resonance and demonstrating why television noir deserves our attention. The introduction traces the development of TV noir and provides an overview and evaluation of the book's thirteen essays, each of which discusses an exemplary TV noir series. Realism, relativism, and integrity are discussed in essays on Dragnet, Naked City, The Fugitive, and Secret Agent. Existentialist themes of authenticity, nihilism, and the search for life's meaning are addressed in essays on Miami Vice, The Sopranos, Carnivale, and 24. The methods of crime scene investigation in The X-Files and CSI are examined, followed by an exploration of autonomy, selfhood, and interpretation in The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Millennium. With this focus on the philosophical dimensions of crime, espionage, and science fiction series, The Philosophy of TV Noir draws out the full implications of film noir and establishes TV noir as an art form in its own right.

Film noir is a classic genre characterized by visual elements such as tilted camera angles, skewed scene compositions, and an interplay between darkness and light. Common motifs include crime and punishment, the upheaval of traditional moral values, and a pessimistic stance on the meaning of life and on the place of humankind in the universe. Spanning the 1940s and 1950s, the classic film noir era saw the release of many of Hollywood's best-loved studies of shady characters and shadowy underworlds, including Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, and The Maltese Falcon. Neo-noir is a somewhat loosely defined genre of films produced after the classic noir era that display the visual or thematic hallmarks of the noir sensibility. The essays collected in The Philosophy of Neo-Noir explore the philosophical implications of neo-noir touchstones such as Blade Runner, Chinatown, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, and the films of the Coen brothers. Through the lens of philosophy, Mark T. Conard and the contributors examine previously obscure layers of meaning in these challenging films. The contributors also consider these neo-noir films as a means of addressing philosophical questions about guilt, redemption, the essence of human nature, and problems of knowledge, memory and identity. In the neo-noir universe, the lines between right and wrong and good and evil are blurred, and the detective and the criminal frequently mirror each other's most debilitating personality traits. The neo-noir detective—more antihero than hero—is frequently a morally compromised and spiritually shaken individual whose pursuit of a criminal masks the search for lost or unattainable aspects of the self. 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.

An authoritative companion that offers a wide-ranging thematic survey of this enduringly popular cultural form and includes scholarship from both established and emerging scholars as well as analysis of film noir's influence on other media including television and graphic novels. Covers a wealth of new approaches to film noir and neo-noir that explore issues ranging from conceptualization to cross-media influences Features chapters exploring the wider ‘noir mediascape’ of television, graphic novels and radio Reflects the historical and geographical reach of film noir, from the 1920s to the present and in a variety of national cinemas Includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars

Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is an overview of 20th- and 21st-century noir and fatalist film practice from 1945 onwards. The book demonstrates the ways in which American cinema has inculcated a climate of fear in our daily lives, as reinforced, starting in the 1950s, by television, and later videocassettes, the web, and the Internet, to create, by the early 21st century a hypersurveillant atmosphere in which no one can avoid the barrage of images that continually assault our senses. The book begins with the return of American soldiers from World War II, 'liberated' from war in the Pacific by the newly created atomic bomb, which will come to rule American consciousness through much of the 1950s and 1960s and then, in a newer, more small-scale way, become a fixture of terrorist hardware in the post-paranoid ear of the 21st century. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is constructed in six chapters, each highlighting a particular 'raising of the cinematic stakes' in the creation of a completely immersible universe of images. Selling points:*Expands the definition of noir to include numerous lesser known works.*Deals with Red Scare films of the 1950s in the US.*Examines the 'dark side' of the 1960s, or films that questioned the emerging counterculture.*Explores such neo-noir films as The Last Seduction (1993), Angel Heart (1987), The Grifters (1990), Red Rock West (1993), The Usual Suspects (1995), Mulholland Drive (2001), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Memento (2000).*Details the 'noir' aspects of the cybernetic age, both in online and videogame uses.

What is Film Noir? surveys the various theories of film noir, defines film noir, and explains how the genre relates to the style and the period in which noir was created. It also provides a very useful theory of genre and how it relates to film study.

Explores the development of film noir as a cultural and artistic phenomenon. This book traces the development of what we know as film noir from the proto-noir elements of Feuillade's silent French crime series and German Expressionism to the genre's mid-twentieth century popularization and influence on contemporary global media. By employing experimental lighting effects, oblique camera angles, distorted compositions, and shifting points-of-view, film noir's style both creates and comments upon a morally adumbrated world, where the alienating effects of the uncanny, the fetishistic, and the surreal dominate. What drew original audiences to film noir is an immediate recognition of this modern social and psychological reality. Much of the appeal of film noir concerns its commentary on social anxieties, its cynical view of political and capitalist corruption, and its all-too-brutal depictions of American modernity. This book examines the changing, often volatile shifts in representations of masculinity and femininity, as well as the genre's complex relationship with Afro-American culture, observable through noir's musical and sonic experiments. Key featuresTraces the history of film noir from its aesthetic antecedents through its mid-century popularization to its influence on contemporary global mediaDiscusses the influence of literary and artistic sources on the development of film noirIncludes extensive bibliographies, filmographies and recommended noir film viewingConcludes with a reflective chapter by Alain Silver and James Ursini on their own influential studies and collections on film noir criticism

Film noir_literally 'black cinema'_is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

More than any other set of films from the classical era, the Hollywood film noir is known for its lighting: the cast shadows, the blinking street signs, the eyes sparkling in the darkness. Each effect is rich in symbolism, evoking a world of danger and doppelgangers. But what happens if we set aside the symbolism? This book offers a new account of film noir lighting, grounded in a larger theory of Hollywood cinematography as emotionally engaging storytelling. Above all, noir lighting is dynamic, switching from darkness to brightness and back again as characters change, locations shift, and fates unfold. Richly illustrated, Film Noir and the Arts of Lighting features in-depth analyses of eleven classic movies: The Asphalt Jungle, Sorry, Wrong Number, Odds against Tomorrow, The Letter, I Wake Up Screaming, Phantom Lady, Strangers on a Train, Sweet Smell of Success, Gaslight, Secret beyond the Door, and Touch of Evil.