Everything you need to know in life you can learn from film noir. And everything you can learn from film noir, you can find in It's a Bitter Little World. This collection of quotes:; Includes both classic as well as contemporary quotes, providing a complete history of noir; Organizes quotes by themed chapters and by decades, giving readers an inside view into how noir has developed; Shares new celebrity quotes - created especially for this book - from the likes of Pat Sajak, Harry Knowles, Wil Wheaton, Tara Santana, Gary Hart, '60s counterculture legend Paul Krassner and more With an eye-catching, sleek design, this book will appeal to lovers of film noir and gift buyers.
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About the Author
Charles Pappas has written for many US publications.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Six Decades of Blunt Talk from Classic Film Noir, Neo-Noir & Generally Cynical Cinema.,
By
This review is from: It's a Bitter Little World (Paperback)
Sharp, unsentimental dialogue that says it like it is and apologizes for nothing is one of the reasons that the popularity of classic film noir endures. Those brutal lines delivered with machine-gun timing and precision are seared onto the minds of their audience. Writers and directors strive to capture that hard-boiled style in modern noir crime films. Madison Avenue knows that smart, blunt tag lines sell stuff. Such is the power of terse, cynical repartee. "It's a Bitter Little World" collects many of the most memorable, most brutally honest quotes from film noir, 1940 to 2005, into a single volume of gleefully pessimistic lines, organized by theme and by decade and accented with stark graphics.Author Charles Pappas starts the reader off with a story of his own real-life femme fatale, followed by an overview of film noir through the decades written in a forceful style reminiscent of hard-boiled crime novels. Then to the quotes, which are arranged by theme in 5 chapters: "The Dicks and the Desperate", "The Dames and the Mugs", "The Brutality and the Barbs", "The Money and the Grubbing", "The Life Lessons and the Death Wishes". The chapter titles give some idea of the subject of the quotes. It's not always obvious why quotes are placed where they are, but there is a handy index in the back of the book, where you can find quotes by film if you're looking for something in particular. Within each chapter, the quotes are organized by decade, with the name and year of the film clearly indicated. It's nice to be able to see the evolution of film noir dialogue from the laconic 1940s to the more vulgar late 20th century. Chapter 6, "The Quotes that Dreams Are Made Of", contains new quotes in the noir style contributed by contemporary writers, actors, and media personalities. The quotes are in the form of dialogue for movies that, of course, don't exist. That's probably just as well, but it's an amusing exercise anyway, with contributions by Gary Hart, Alain Silver, and Harry Knowles, among others. The quotes that fill "It's a Bitter Little World" represent about 300 films, more than 6 decades of film noir and its progeny. The book makes a nice gift for film noir fans and a useful reference for even those buffs who already have a shelf full of film noir books.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Piece of History,
By Jake Justus (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It's a Bitter Little World (Paperback)
Every once in a while, and it's not often, you run across a book whose contents seem ready to bust its covers. ITS A BITTER LITTLE WORLD is one of those beauties. Charles Pappas has created a multi-media experience in book form. Not only do you get the best film-noir quotations ever uttered by the most desperate guys and dolls, but you get them surrounded by graphics and design that pull you right into the shadows. Visually, it's a striking book. And, as if that wasn't enough, you get a healthy dose of Mr. Pappas' own observations, written in a style that has all the bite and brains of the genre he obviously loves so well. ITS A BITTER LITTLE WORLD is a labor of love, and it pulls no punches. I can't imagine a worthier tribute to the film-noir genre, and I can't imagine anyone pulling it off half as well as Mr. Pappas. Film-noir has given us the greatest dialogue in the history of cinema, and ITS A BITTER LITTLE WORLD is a feast of imagery and phrases whose like we won't see again. This is a book for every library.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fun, revealing compilation lending to leisure browsing by any who love film noir and literature,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It's a Bitter Little World (Paperback)
Charles Pappas' It's A Bitter Little World: The Smartest Toughest Nastiest Quotes From Film Noir represents the author's sixty years of film noir surveys to locate quotes and dialogue which pertain to life's challenges and answers. Arranged by decade, these are scalding quotes and even fun, memorable lines and dialogue bits which reflect a love of language and an eye to fun. It's A Bitter Little World is a fun, revealing compilation lending to leisure browsing by any who love film noir and literature.
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