Noir Style - Softcover

Silver, Alain

4.14

97 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1468307347 ISBN 13: 9781468307344

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2013

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In The Noir Style, experts Alain Silver and James Ursini analyze the look of noir--its elements and their impact on the most American of film movements--revisiting the territory they made their own in their classic Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. Silver and Ursini trace the development of noir to its origins and documents its borrowings from other visual arts, with chapters covering each of the recurring motifs that define the genre. Stills and background are provided for classics like A Touch of Evil, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and In a Lonely Place. Both an indispensable reference guide and an irresistible treat for film buffs, The Noir Style is an engaging and informative addition to the literature of film. A new afterword examines how the tropes of noir continue to be relevant for contemporary filmmakers.

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Review:

Standard histories of film noir commence the coining of the term (which means "black film") by French writers in the years after the war when they saw a new mingling of grit, wit, and swooning Thanatos in movies like The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. Alain Silver's and James Ursini's nearly libidinous collection of "duo-tone" (i.e., black and white) movie stills reaches far afield, finding noir's style radiating from the Brucke painters in the 1920s, Edward Hopper's wee-small-hours townscapes of the 1940s, and Weegee's bloody, beautiful photos. In page after oversized page, the authors park perceptive readings beside images of classic rainy streets (Underworld, USA, The Money Trap), doomy women in lipstick (Laura, Gilda), disturbed interiors (Sunset Boulevard), and wrenching ironies (DOA). The commentary reveals how light, frame, composition, body language, and a few other irreducibles charge individual scenes and contribute to the look of noir as a whole, beginning with gangster and horror films in the 1930s and closing with Silence of the Lambs in 1992. The texts lapse occasionally into heavy breathing about Meaning, but the authors invite us to get what we want from this most stylish of American movie genres by just flipping the pages. With hardly a clich� image in the bunch, we can eagerly fall afresh into Jane Russell's outstretched arms (in Macao), zoom down the black sidewalk stretching behind a dying John Garfield (in He Ran All the Way), and contemplate once more the tissue of lies between Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. --Lyall Bush

About the Author:

Alain Silver and James Ursini are the authors of Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. Alain Silver is also the author of The Samurai Film, and co-author of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles (all available from Overlook).

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