This seminar introduces students to a remarkable body of American film produced within the Hollywood studio system. One of the courses key goals is having you become a more critical and informed viewer of this cycle of films that combines older techniques of narrative derived from story-telling, the novel and the stage with a more purely filmic use of spectacle, light, editing and image. Therefore, for some students, habituated to the more spectacle-oriented techniques used in such contemporary Hollywood films as Pulp Fiction, developing the critical and receptive stance toward these films also means learning how to see or read them, in part, on their own terms. In addition *to viewing two films each week*, the seminar examines a number of key theoretical issues raised by these films. And it does so, in part, through a set of intensive readings organized around 1.- the history and context of the noir cycle, 2.- specific films and the issues they raise, and 3.- broad noir thematics such as the femme fatale, alienation, urban paranoia, and so forth. (*We will view a third film in week 16.)

We will examine (but not restrict ourselves to) the following interrelated sites of investigation:

1. The idea of film noir. Most of the films we will view were produced and consumed as crime or detective films. To what degree does a millennial resurgence of interest in films noir rely on a revisionist assessment of these hard-edged portrayals of alienated women and men?

2. Representations of urban space. The city is the noir world’s site, particularly after dark. Why did post-WW II noir portray an almost deterministic relationship between radical alienation and urban life? What had changed? A broader problematic of American anti-urbanism is at play in these films, a touch of evil that resonates with late 90s anxieties. What is the meaning of detection and paranoia that so often drives these films plots? What lies hidden behind the black and white, high contrast surfaces of noir? Is it modern life itself that is under the microscope? Under the guide of the B picture, Hollywood was able to provide a social critique of post-war urban America. Equally, however, some of these films are instruction manuals for the new post-war domestic economy.

3. Sexuality and gender.

a. The femme fatale is central to the noir world. Much writing on the topic portrays her as the sexist fantasy that flows from radically insecure masculinist sexual fantasies. While this is undoubtedly the case (and we will view films that confirm this assessment), some femmes fatale are proto-feminist. Others can be read through the lens of Nietzsche’s tragic hero.

b. Noir also relies on positioning gay/queer characters as monsters. Because self-censorship, Hollywood self-censoring production codes, the contemporary social imaginary, and the paranoia engendered by the post war HUAC witchhunt could not yet name homosexuality in opposition to heterosexuality, these films treatment of queer ironically destabilizes normative and naturalized sexual identity.

4. Narrative/spectacle. Though noir relies heavily on images and spectacle, it is also embedded in the narrative tradition. This seminar provides an opportunity to relearn/reconsider a filmic articulation of narrative and spectacle that seems to have receded from view in current American cinema. Noir’s cinematic techniques organize a way of looking at the world that intersects with the perceptive faculties of viewers. In other words, how might the filmic apparatus of noir (the conceptions built into the films as ideas and filmic devices) interact with the perceptions of viewers? In addition, as part of our enquiry into narrative/spectacle, and how the narrative form of a novel is performed by a film, we will read four novels adapted to films noir and enquire into the constraints and opportunities presented by each form.

Texts:

Cain, James M. Double Indemnity, Vintage Crime, 1992.

Kaplan, E. Ann (ed.). Women in Film Noir, BFI Publishing, 1998.

Kitses, Jim. Gun Crazy, BFI Publishing, 1996.

McArthur, Colin. The Big Heat, BFI Publishing, 1992.

Naremore, James. More Than Night, U. of California P., 1998.

Polan, Dana.. In A Lonely Place, BFI Publishing, 1992.

Schickel, Richard. Double Indemnity. BFI Publishing, 1992.

Telotte, J.P. Voices In The Dark, Indiana U.P., 1989.

*