Pulp Fiction To Film Noir

During the Great Depression, pulp fiction writers created a new, distinctly American detective story, one that stressed the development of fascinating, often bizarre characters rather than the twists and turns of clever plots. This new crime fiction adapted brilliantly to the screen, birthing a cinematic genre that French cinema intellectuals following World War II christened "film noir." Set on dark streets late at night, in cheap hotels and bars, and populated by the dangerous people who frequented these locales, these films introduced a new antihero, a tough, brooding, rebellious loner, embodied by Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. This volume provides a detailed exploration of film noir, tracing its evolution, the influence of such legendary writers as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and the films that propelled this dark genre to popularity in the mid-20th century.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Dresden Technical University, course: The American Noir, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this paper for the seminar "American Noir" I want to analyze Quentin Tarantino's 1994 movie Pulp Fiction. Since he does not make use of computer based scenes or sumptuous tricks in any of his films, it is only the storyline as well as the characters and the actors respectively that bear the responsibility of entertaining and fascinating the audience. The success of Tarantino's works leads me to the conclusion that the aforementioned features have certainly been effective; therefore, I am going to concentrate on them in my seminar paper. A special focus will be laid on the relationships between the protagonists because their way of interacting is essential for the plot. Additionally, the stylistic devices will be looked upon with a special attention for the ones that make Pulp Fiction a film noir. Furthermore, the relevance of mis -en-scene, especially the setting, of camera work, and of time is to be discussed.

Dana Polan sets out to unlock the style and technique of 'Pulp Fiction'. He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.

Black & White & Noir explores America's pulp modernism through penetrating readings of the noir sensibility lurking in an eclectic array of media: Office of War Information photography, women's experimental films, and African-American novels, among others. It traces the dark edges of cultural detritus blowing across the postwar landscape, finding in pulp a political theory that helps explain America's fascination with lurid spectacles of crime. We are accustomed to thinking of noir as a film form popularized in movies like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and, more recently, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. But it is also, Paula Rabinowitz argues, an avenue of social and political expression. This book offers an unparalleled historical and theoretical overview of the noir shadows cast when the media's glare is focused on the unseen and the unseemly in our culture. Through far-ranging discussions of the Starr Report, movies such as Double Indemnity and The Big Heat, and figures as various as Barbara Stanwyck, Kenneth Fearing, and Richard Wright, Rabinowitz finds in film noir the representation of modern America's attempt to submerge and mask its violent history of racial and class anatagonisms. Black & White & Noir also explores the theory and practice of stilettos, the ways in which girls in the 1950s viewed film noir as a secret language about their mothers' pasts, the extraordinary tone-setting photographs of Esther Bubley, and the smutty aspect of social workers' case studies, among other unexpected twists and provocative turns.

By incorporating and transforming foreign influences, film noir became a uniquely American art form. Though it was overlooked at first, this powerful genre would give Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum career-defining roles, fuel Joan Crawford's middle-age comeback, and set the stage for the work of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Noir illuminated the dark side of the American dream, but despite its characteristic bleakness, these films are somehow always fun. Film Noir: 75 Years of the Greatest Crime Films revisits 20 of the genre's best, from the first noir The Maltese Falcon to L.A. Confidential. We commence by delving into "Classic Noir," films released between 1941 and 1958 with their angular chiaroscuro and Teutonic angst combined with the influence of pup and hard-boiled crime fiction. Stunning photography walks us through Shadow of a Doubt, Double Indemnity, Laura, Mildred Pierce, Out of the Past, The Third Man, In a Lonely Place, Niagara, The Night of the Hunter, Touch of Evil and more. Next in our "Neo Noir" section, you will see the transformation of noir from 1967 onward with films like Bonnie and Clyde, Dirty Harry, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Body Heat, Blood Simple, Blue Velvet, Pulp Fiction and more. Articles about how the genre was born, tabloids and film noir, offscreen noir, and what factors lead film back to black punctuate these spreads. Enter the cinematic world of "doom, fate, fear, and betrayal," as beloved film critic Roger Ebert said, with Film Noir: 75 Years of the Greatest Crime Films.

Can't you feel the warm velvety wings of a butterfly opening in your chest as the bourbon slides down your throat? Or maybe you feel the rasp developing in your voice from all those cigarettes? Ever been burnt by a dame, not knowing which end was up when it was all over? The rich history of Pulp stories are pure Americana. Written like a script from Film Noir movie, you are to be transported to a time in the 30's, 40's or 50's, where the liquor flowed freely and there was always a Crosley radio playing in some room off in the distance, just barely audible. The stories don't always end on a high note, or even end at all. The magic of a Pulp Noir short story is that the reader is supposed to wonder what comes next. After the last word on the page, the story for the characters moves on long after the final sentence. Unless the character is lying face down in a pool of blood or off to the clink. The reader is to guess as to what happens next and what came before. Pulp Noir is more about a small slice or life, a moment in time, and usually a dark one. So please enjoy. Pour yourself a nice warm drink, dim the lights and in your best Robert Mitchum or Bogart voice or maybe your Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck impersonation, read the stories like you were telling them to a friend over a drink at the edge of a bar somewhere. So conjure up in your consciousness; Femme Fatales, handguns, seedy bars, bad luck, thieves, scoundrels, a book of matches, a pack of Pall Mall's, low lighting and definitely everything in glorious black and white.

"One of the very best film books in recent years. . . . There are any number of books on noir, but none as comprehensive, as rigorous, as far-reaching as Naremore's. . . . It will be the essential work for the field."--Dana Polan, University of Southern California

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

This book combines film studies with urban theory in a spatial exploration of twentieth century Los Angeles. Configured through the dark lens of noir, the author examines an alternate urban history of Los Angeles forged by the fictional modes of detective fiction, film noir and neo noir. Dark portrayals of the city are analyzed in Raymond Chandler’s crime fiction through to key films like Double Indemnity (1944) and The End of Violence (1997). By employing these fictional elements as the basis for historicising the city’s unrivalled urban form, the analysis demonstrates an innovative approach to urban historiography. Revealing some of the earliest tendencies of postmodern expression in Hollywood cinema, this book will be of great relevance to students and researchers working in the fields of film, literature, cultural and urban studies. It will also be of interest to scholars researching histories of Los Angeles and the American noir imagination.

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.