Product Description

Flourishing in the United States during the 1940s and 50s, the bleak, violent genre of filmmaking known as film noir reflected the attitudes of writers and auteur directors influenced by the events of the turbulent mid-twentieth century. Films such as Force of Evil, Night and the City, Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Heat, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly and, more recently, Chinatown and The Grifters are indelibly American. Yet the sources of this genre were found in Germany and France and imported to Hollywood by emigré filmmakers, who developed them and allowed a vibrant genre to flourish.

Andrew Dickos’s Street with No Name traces the film noir genre back to its roots in German Expressionist cinema and the French cinema of the interwar years. Dickos describes the development of the film noir in America from 1941 through the 1970s and examines how this development expresses a modern cinema. He argues that, in its most satisfying form, the film noir exists as a series of conventions with an iconography and characters of distinctive significance. Through stylized lighting and urban settings, these films tell a melodramatic narrative involving characters who commit crimes predicated on destructive passions, corruption, and a submission to human weakness and fate.

Unlike other studies of the noir, Street with No Name follows its development in a loosely historical style that associates certain noir directors with those features in their films that helped define the scope of the genre. Dickos examines notable directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, John Huston, Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, Samuel Fuller, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, Anthony Mann and others. He also charts the genre’s influence on such celebrated postwar French filmmakers as Jean-Pierre Melville, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard.

Addressing the aesthetic, cultural, political, and social concerns depicted in the genre, Street with No Name demonstrates how the film noir generates a highly expressive, raw, and violent mood as it exposes the ambiguities of modern postwar society

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #900132 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

From Library Journal
What do Alexander the Great and film noir have in common? Both subjects invariably spur the writing of first-class books. While not as comprehensive as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Dickos's work skillfully plumbs this "dark cinema," a style (genre to some, crime subgenre to others) that is recognized in such recent productions as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento (2001) but whose heyday resides between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958). Dickos (Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges and the Movies) does not neglect noir's roots in post-World War I German silent cinema and 1930s French sound films. He targets directors (from ‚migr‚s Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger to American-born Nicholas Ray and Don Siegel), settings (especially the city), protagonists (pursued and pursuer), plot devices (amnesia, flashbacks), and specific films (Body and Soul, The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly, and many more). The movie stills have been carefully chosen; a useful bibliography and credits for selected films are furnished as well. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A gracefully written overview of the film noir genre, with special side trips to specific films and themes." -- Peter Rollins

Review

"Dickos spins a good web for film noir addicts.-- Culturevulture.net" -- Culturevulture.net

"Traces classic American film noir back to its antecedents in German Expressionism and the Golden Age of French Cinema in the 1930s, which have not been given their due.-- Gene Phillips" -- Gene Phillips

"Dickos's work skillfully plumbs this 'dark cinema,' a style that is recognized in such recent productions as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento (2001) but whose heyday resides between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958).-- Library Journal" -- Library Journal

"It is refreshing to see a book that shifts away from specific textual analysis and criticism to an historical focus. In so doing it not only reminds us of the vastness of the noir canon, but also the marginalization of many overlooked texts and directors.-- Literature/Film Quarterly" -- Literature/Film Quarterly

"A concrete, concise study of noir against an impressive historical vista that brings to light the complex relation between alienation and obsession that makes up these films.-- Rain Taxi Review" -- Rain Taxi Review

"Definitely stands among the better studies of the film genre.-- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society" -- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"The best book available on the genre of movies set in the dark, wet streets of the urban U.S.-- Thomas Cripps, Choice" -- Thomas Cripps, Choice

"El autor analiza con acierto las caracteristícas del estilo y estructuras del 'cine negro.' La influencia del 'cine negro' sigue presente en el cine actual, por eso la lectura de un libro como Street with No Name resulta muy ú til.-- Todo Sobre Cine" -- Todo Sobre Cine

"Shrewdly analyzes those movies.-- Wall Street Journal" -- Wall Street Journal

Customer Reviews

A stunning achievement
Andrew Dickos has written both a brilliant overview of the history and development of film noir -- tracing it back to German films of the 20s and French movie from the 30s -- and an astute examination of individual works and filmmakers.

The author's writing style is sharp and lively and his critiques of the movies are incisive, original and provocative.

A fascinating book; a must-have for the serious movie fan.

Publish or perish
Which is the presumed motive for this extended revisitation of an extensively analyzed subject. This book is bizarrely organized which somewhat masks the fact that it has almost nothing new to say. Odd comments aside ("...the casual amorality of Chandlerian violence"?!?), the text is little more than a series of introductory remarks with thumbnail bios of hardboiled writers and auteurist asides that cobble together plot summaries and allusions to the writings of other critics. Chapter 4 starts off with promise but fizzles. The extended closing comments on the French New Wave, the epilog, and the needlessly repeated selected credits are pure filler.

Down These Mean Streets Too Many Times
To give Dickos credit, he has an interesting discussion of pre-war French "poetic realism" and post-war French films of the noir era and notes the differences between them. That is new and different.

However, much of what he does in this book has been done elsewhere and better (books by Spicer, Naremore, Palmer, and Christopher for example.) I found the book's organization to be poor. For example he opens with a discussion of German Expressionism in the pre-1933 era, but then leaps to a discussion of Fritz Lang's films and then Robert Siodmak's films. Then he has the discussion of French proto-noir. When he gets to the classic noir era of 1941-58, he has some topics but mostly he does director surveys, and I couldn't see why he dealt with the directors in that order.

So if you don't have many books on noir, you may find something of interest here. If you have read the books I've mentioned earlier, or have the Silver and Ursini encyclopedia, you don't need to get this book.