Greek Film Noir

Investigates how film noir has been received, adapted and developed in Greece, from the 1940s to the present

• Traces the evolution of a scholarly neglected – in the Greek context – film genre; it introduces an original corpus of texts extending from the 1940s to the present
• Offers a panoramic overview of leading Greek auteur figures, from Nikos Koundouros and Tonia Marketaki to Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Nikolaidis, viewing their work, for the first time, from a film-noir stylistic and thematic perspective
• Presents the cultural context of a noir universe in post-WWII Greece, including: pulp fiction and crime literature, jazz and pop music, media discourses, Greek commercial cinema’s advertising and promotional strategies
• Explores the historical representations and ideological debates reflected in the Greek film noir in the aftermath of WWII and the Greek Civil War and traces the political re-appropriation of the genre by the left-wing filmmakers of New Greek Cinema during the military junta (1967-1974)
• Explains the reasons behind the post-2009 crisis revival of the noir genre in contemporary Greek cinema and the Greek Weird Wave
• Confirms noir’s particular tendency to transcend boundaries as it spills out onto other genres, producing innovative hybrids; and its ability to express the gender and socio-political anxieties of its era
• Presents an argument for the transnational character of the noir phenomenon and the complex relationship of European cinemas with Hollywood

Offering the first comprehensive study of Greek film noir, this book explores the reception and influence of U.S. and European film noir and neo-noir in Greece and their effect on Greek filmmaking. Employing theoretical frameworks from New Film History, it offers a fresh look at underrated or neglected cultural products to provide insights into Greek modernity and reveal the affinities of established Greek auteurs with the film-noir tradition. Firmly establishing Greece on the film noir cinematic map, it provides a panoramic overview of leading Greek auteurs, from Nikos Koundouros and Maria Plyta to Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Nikolaidis, whose work is innovatively viewed from an angle of film-noir style and thematics.