Customer Reviews

Dark City: The Film Noir

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Having been a hardcore NOIR fanatic for the past 7 of my 32 years, I've amassed quite an extensive collection of videos,posters, and of course books. This particular reference was one of the first I picked up as I needed one that featured an extensive filmography to help me in my research, and no other NOIR book has a filmography as exhaustive as the one in 'DARK CITY'. Some 500 NOIR films are listed in the second half of the book, alphabetically, with the year of release, the cast, crew, and often a helpful review. The first half is a collection of some 25 essays on many of the biggest and best NOIRs. Not a particularly great place to start one's NOIR studies if you want only to be entertained or exposed to many stills from NOIR films, 'DARK CITY' is more for the student of this elusive sub-genre. It is first and foremost a thoroughly helpful guide to those who are planning to spend some time tracking down lost b-classics and late night hard-boiled entertainment. NOIR rules!

The high point of Selby's Dark City is a filmography of 490 classic film noir titles. Each entry includes a brief synopsis as well as information on the film's year of release, studio, producer, director, main actors, and running time. All told, this filmography provides an excellent supplement to Silver and Ward's Encyclopedia of Film Noir.

Aside from the filmography, however, Dark City has little else to recommend it. The quality of the book's photos, typography, and editing are all poor. Even worse, Selby provides an in-depth discussion of 25 films, but his prose comes off as an amateurish attempt at academic writing.

In light of these flaws, and the fact that the book is less than 200 pages (not counting the appendices and indices), Dark City seems excessively overpriced.

I consider Selby's filmography an excellent resource, but it's not worth the list price of the book. If such a resource appeals to you, I recommend you do what I did: buy a used copy.