Product Description

Classic "film noir" was Hollywood's "dark cinema" of crime and corruption; a genre underpinned by a tone of existential cynicism which stripped bare the myth of the American Dream and offered a bleak, nightmarish vision of a fragmented society that rhymed with many of the social realities of forties and fifties America. "Mean Streets and Raging Bulls" explores how, since its apparent demise in the late fifties, the "noir" genre has been revitalized during the post-studio era. The book is divided into two sections. In the first, the evolution of "film noir" is contextualized in relation to both American cinema's industrial transformation and the post-Depression history of the United States. In the second, the evolution of neo-noir and its relation to classic "film noir" is illustrated by detailed reference to representative texts including "Chinatown" (Roman Polanski, 1974), "Night Moves" (Arthur Penn, 1975), "Taxi Driver" (Martin Scorsese, 1976), "Blood Simple" (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1984), "After Hours" (Martin Scorsese, 1985), "Sea of Love" (Harold Becker, 1989), "Resevoir Dogs" (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), and "Romeo is Bleeding" (Peter Medak, 1994).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2115817 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Richard Martin (Ph.D., Film Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a freelance writer and editor.

Customer Reviews

WEALTH OF INFO ON HOLLYWOODS 2ND GOLDEN AGE
I really like this book!!! I have about 50 pages to go and dread finishing it. I love the great films of the late sixties and seventies- Coppola, Scorcese, Ashby, Kubrick, and this book looks behind the scenes of the machine that produced them and the creative people who made them. Check it out. Only reason for 4 stars is that I would have liked more photos.