Description
Book SynopsisBiesen brings prodigious archival research, accessible prose, and imaginative insights to both well-known films noir of the wartime period-The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Double Indemnity-and others often overlooked or underrated-Scarlet Street, Ministry of Fear, Phantom Lady, and Stranger on the Third Floor.
Trade ReviewBiesen adds a new perspective that enhances scholarship on the subject and makes this book a must. Choice 2006 Ms Biesen describes too how film noir drew on societal anxieties as Americans faced fear, loss and shortages during the war and viewed ever-more-harrowing newsreel footage. 'As life on the homefront became increasingly hard-boiled,' she writes, 'so too did American film.' -- Nina Ayoub Chronicle of Higher Education 2006 Biesen's book is readable, informative and jargon free... Biesen uses her research into studio archives, the films' attendant publicity and the contemporary press to bring alive the wartime period of film noir and its transformation into a post-war genre for dealing with troubled veterans returning home, the coming of the Cold War, nuclear angst and the effects of McCarthyism on Hollywood and the nation at large. Times Literary Supplement 2006 Readers will come away from Blackout with a fuller understanding of the industrial and historical contexts of wartime film noir. -- Charles Maland Cineaste 2006 This text offers a compelling history of wartime Hollywood and a provocative challenge to current noir scholarship. Southern California Quarterly 2006 An important contribution to the history of film noir. -- Jan-Christopher Horak Screening the Past 2006 A film noir aficionado, Biesen provides the most detailed and thoroughly researched interpretation of this era's American film noir. -- Clayton Koppes American Historical Review 2007 The author is to be congratulated on producing an exemplary study in empirical film history. -- Brian Neve Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 2008
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The Elements of Noir Come Together
Chapter 3. Hollywood in the Aftermath of Pearl Harbor
Chapter 4. Censorship, Hard-Boiled Fiction, and Hollywood's "Red Meat" Crime Cycle
Chapter 5. Rosie the Riveter Goes to Hollywood
Chapter 6. Hyphenates and Hard-Boiled Crime
Chapter 7. Black Film, Red Meat
Notes
Index
