B+
Lee Carruthers
Film noir refers, most concretely, to a group of films produced during the 1940s and 1950s in Hollywood that share distinct formal and ideological features. At the same time, it may be understood as something more contemporary, as a style or sensibility that remains compelling for filmmakers and viewers today. In our course, we will focus primarily upon titles produced during the studio era, situating film noir within its original contexts. This is to examine the emergence of noir within the Hollywood system, alongside its cinematic and literary antecedents; further, it is to consider noir’s critical reception in France and within subsequent academic film study. Finally, this course will move beyond the studio era to discuss the phenomenon of 'neo-noir' and its manifestations from 1960 to the present.