Shades of Noir (Haymarket) [Paperback]

Joan Copjec (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0860916251 | ISBN-13: 978-0860916253 | Publication Date: November 17, 1993

Paris, summer 1946: this moment marks an important event in cinema history, not of production but of exhibition.

For this was the summer when, after the hiatus of the Second World War, French critics were again given the opportunity to view films from Hollywood. The films they saw, including The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity. Laura, Murder, My Sweet, and The Woman in the Window, prompted the naming and theorization of a new phenomenon: film noir.

Much of what has been written about the genre since has remained within the orbit of this preliminary assessment. While sympathetic towards the early French critics, this collection of original essays attempts to move beyond their first fascinated look. Beginning with an autonomy of that look—of the 'poujadist' climate that nourished it and the imminent collapse of the Hollywood studio system that gave it its mournful inflection—Shades of Noir re-explores and calls into question the object first constructed by it. The impetus for this shift in perspective comes from the films themselves, viewed in the light of contemporary social and political concerns, and from new theoretical insights.

Several contributions analyze the re-emergence of noir in recent years, most notably in the hybrid forms produced in the 1980s by the merging of noir with science fiction and horror, for example Blade Runner and Angel Heart, and in films by black directors such as Deep Cover, Straight out of Brooklyn, A Rage in Harlem and One False Move. Other essays focus on the open urban territory in which the noir hero hides out; the office spaces in Chandler, and the palpable sense of waiting that fills empty warehouses, corridors and hotel rooms.

Finally, Shades of Noir pays renewed attention to the lethal relation between the sexes; to the femme fatale and the other women in noir. As the role of women expands, the femme fatale remains deadly, but her deadliness takes on new meanings.

Contributors: Janet Bergstrom, Joan Copjec, Elizabeth Cowie, Manthia Diawara, Frederic Jameson, Dean MacCannel, Fred Pfeil, David Reid and Jayne L. Walker, Marc Vernet, Slavoj Zizek.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The essays in this volume examine the widely studied and discussed genre from a variety of perspectives, not always agreeing on exactly what constitutes film noir or which movies exemplify its elements. Beyond such acknowledged classics as Double Indemnity (1944), one contributor sees noir elements in recent black-oriented films such as A Rage in Harlem (1991), while another attempts to explain the noir significance of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The more interesting selections here include an essay on female characters and one on the making of Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953). Other pieces, notably the introduction and essay by Copjec, become bogged down in virtually impenetrable academese and are too nitpicky to interest most readers. Not really suitable as an introduction to the genre, this is worth considering as a secondary source for larger collections.
- David C. Tucker, DeKalb Cty. P.L., Decatur, Ga.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Joan Copjec is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Verso (November 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860916251
• ISBN-13: 978-0860916253
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dense, Highly Academic Collection of Film Noir Theory with a Few Gems., June 26, 2006

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This review is from: Shades of Noir (Haymarket) (Paperback)

"Shades of Noir" is a collection of 10 highly academic essays on the nature of film noir, its origins, and its relevance to the culture at large, first published in 1993. The contributors are mostly academics from universities in the U.S. and Europe. In her introduction, editor Joan Copjec explains that the essays contribute different perspectives, not agreement, on what constitutes film noir. "What unites all the essays...is a strong sense of importance of the genre and of the necessity of retheorizing it." First, due to the "re-emergence of film noir in recent years". Secondly, on account of "the uneasy sense that we never adequately defined it in the first place".

Anyone who has taken a college film course will recognize the heavily Laconian and Marxist themes that run through this collection of essays as typical of film theory. You can either stomach it or you can't. The socio-economic and structuralist theorizing places these essays more in the realm of "cultural studies" than film history. The essays are extremely dense, as the intended audience is fellow academics, not the casual film noir fan. Nevertheless, they contain some interesting insights and new perspectives that are not entirely fantastical if the reader is willing to wade through it. I have to say, though, that this volume unconsciously elucidates the problem of defining film noir. Film noir has never been difficult to define. It has simply always been advantageous for academics not to define it -or to define it in whatever way suits their projects of the moment. So I guess they have left the job to us amateurs, who will make quick work of it. ;-)

The essays are as follows:

(1) "Film Noir on the Edge of Doom" by Marc Vernet. Vernet speculates about the motives of French theorists who "invented" film noir, as he denies that the film noir movement or style ever existed. This is the essay that Alain Silver fired a torrent of criticism at Vernet for in the introduction to his book "Film Noir Reader". Vernet displays an remarkable ignorance of cinematography, hard-boiled crime fiction, American film criticism, and cinema before 1940. (2) "The Synaptic Chandler" by Fredric Jameson. Analysis of the "peculiar nature of Chandler's plot construction", i.e. illogic, the "radio aesthetic" of film noir, and a Heideggerian perspective on the noir world.

(3) "Strange Pursuit: Cornell Woolrich and the Abandoned City of the Forties" by David Reid and Jane L. Walker. Primarily discusses how Woolrich's depression-era sensibility was particularly suitable to film noir and why it found an audience in the post-War 1940s. Very worthwhile for debunking the persistent claims that audiences were drawn to film noir due to "post-war depression" or disillusionment and that the femme fatale was the result of threats to masculine culture posed by women in the workplace. Compares hard-boiled fiction to the crime and adventure novels of the 1830s-1840s.

(4) "The Mystery of The Blue Gardenia" by Janet Bergstrom. Presents the production history of Fritz Lang's film, analysis, and comparison to Vera Caspary's story. I never thought "The Blue Gardenia" had much substance or that it was film noir. I still don't, but the particulars of its adaptation to film are interesting. (5) "Film Noir and Women" by Elizabeth Cowie. Attempt to "change the characterization of film noir as always a masculine film form". The roles of "duplicitous women", female protagonists, and victims. Analysis of several films, in particular Fritz Lang's "Secret Beyond the Door".

(6) "The Phenomenal Nonphenomenal: Private Space in Film Noir" by Joan Copjec. Starts with observation that the origin of detective fiction coincides with mid-19th century "passion for counting". The role of reason in film noir, particularly as exemplified in voice-over narration. Focus on "Double Indemnity". (7) "The Thing That Thinks: The Kantian Background of the Noir Subject" by Slavoj Zizek. Compares classic film noir to films of the 1980s that combine noir with other genres. Focus on "radical undermining of self-identity" in 1987's "Angel Heart" and 1982's "Blade Runner".

(8) "Home Fires Burning" by Fred Pfeil. The "domestication of film noir" in the neo-noir of the 1980s, focusing on the small-town domestic space of the art house "Blue Velvet" and the cyborg-as-father in the blockbuster "Terminator 2". Attributes this emphasis on nuclear family to "Reaganism". (9) "Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema" by Manthia Diawara. Race and class in black film noir, focusing on "A Rage in Harlem". (10) "Democracy's Turn: On Homeless Noir" by Dan MacCannell. Diatribe on film noir's alleged "confrontation between capitalism and democracy". The disappearances of the "actual spaces" of film noir as seedy neighborhoods were gentrified.