Edinburgh University Press
Traditions in American Cinema
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 Features
- Traces the history of film noir from its aesthetic antecedents through its mid-century popularization to its influence on contemporary global media
- Discusses the influence of literary and artistic sources on the development of film noir
- Includes extensive bibliographies, filmographies and recommended noir film viewing
- Concludes with a reflective chapter by Alain Silver and James Ursini on their own influential studies and collections on film noir criticism
An exploration of the impact of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ on American cinema
Popular cinema is often derided with the epithet ‘it’s only a movie’, but is there any more potent cultural artefact than popular film? Where could one turn for a more effective cultural barometer than to Hollywood cinema?
American film in the first decade of the new millennium became a cultural battleground on which a war of representation was waged, but did these films endorse the ‘War on Terror’ or criticise it? More than just reproducing these fears and fantasies, The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second argues that American cinema has played a significant role in shaping them, restructuring how audiences have viewed the ‘War on Terror’ in particularly influential ways.
This compelling, theoretically informed and up-to-date exploration of contemporary American cinema charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film from Black Hawk Down (2001), through Batman Begins (2005), United 93 (2006) to Olympus Has Fallen (2013). Through a vibrant analysis of a range of genres and films – which in turn reveal a strikingly diverse array of social, historical and political perspectives – The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film:9/11 Frames Per Second explores the impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.
Key Features
- Charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film: draws on a range of contemporary films including Black Hawk Down (2001), through Batman Begins (2005), United 93 (2006) to Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
- Comprehensive and broad in scope: provides a rich social, historical and political context
- Interrogates the emerging debates of the era: focuses on some of the most prominent genres/sub-genres and cycles of the decade and explains why they have emerged and how they differ from pre 9/11 films
