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Film Noir [Paperback]

Alain Silver (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must Have" Aug 1 2003
By Douglas Doepke
Format:Paperback
A "must have" for fans of noir. The book presents itself as an encyclopedic reference, and as a guide to the main body of noir it succeeds admirably. Each entry includes production crew, cast members (identified down to bit players), shooting and release dates, plus running time, along with a brief plot synopsis and critical comment by one of the staff of contributors. Naturally, where there's controversy, it's this latter that generates the most. But agree or not, the comments are almost uniformly informative and stimulating, and a testament to the continuing vitality of noir's golden age. The appendices, however, are a more mixed bag. The categorized lists are helpful as guides, but serious rethinking should have gone into Appendix C, which comes across as a somewhat heavy-handed and murky critique of noir's available literature, rendering doubtful its value as a reference guide. Appendix E presents a compilation of "neo-noirs" or recent films in the classic mode. As a work striving for encyclopedic range, I can understand the urge to extrapolate, but it's also clear that this Third Edition just about exhausts the possibilities and I am not looking forward to another sequel. Nonetheless the work itself remains an invaluable tool for serious fans of noir everywhere, and should not be passed up.
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5.0 out of 5 stars The Torah. Mar 21 2003
By D. Hartley
Format:Paperback
For the Noir Geek, this is THE Sacred Book. Over 300 titles from the genre's "classic" postwar period are given the synopsis/analysis treatment. Reviews can be a bit "scholarly" (depending on the particular contributing writer) but overall very enlightening for fans who want to "go deep". As a collector who obsessively videotapes and archives obscure noir, I have reached for this book again and again and found it to be a valuable reference tool. One warning to those who wish to use it like a standard "movie guide"- the synopsis capsules are clinically outlined to the point of effectively becoming "spoilers", so you may want to see the film first, then read about it. Some reviewers have taken umbrage with the book's U.S.-centric focus. To them I would point out that while this volume excludes European-PRODUCED cinema, if one takes a closer look, a number of the films included were DIRECTED by people like Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Roman Polanski, all in fact native Europeans, so referring to them as "American" noirs may be a matter of semantics. Highly recommended for genre fans.
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5.0 out of 5 stars For Obsessives Only! May 4 2002
By Tribe
Format:Paperback
The casual film fan will be overwhelmed with this...academic jargon, much discussion of film theory, sensory overload of details. But, the obsessive film fan, who is a student (professional or amateur) of this genre will revel in the scope of what has become one of the standard texts on the genre (assuming there is any standard....whatever). A basically complete rundown on the Hollywood output of noir in the 30s through the early 60s...with all the detail on the films that it never occurred to you to ask in the first place.

It also has rather thourough essays on themes, threads, influences, settings...more than enough to explore other sources of noir citicism. It can be dry, it is sorely lacking in coverage of film noir outside the USA, the selection of neo-noir can be quibbled with (perhaps because the post-noir style still isn't settled..."Mullholland Drive", "Novocaine", and "Memento" are examples of how the genre is still evolving).

But all in all, an essential volume for the noir aficionado.

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