Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
A quick definition for film noir
From the Critical Dictionary of Film and Television Theory, film noir is "concerned with the seedy underbelly of America, where crime, corruption and sexual desire intermingle. Recurrent characters include the world-weary detective, the beautiful but deadly femme fatale and her male dupes. Visually, its most striking feature is the use of low-key, high contrast lighting, which evokes the immorality of the world explored within the film.
In the Library's collections
To find what we have in the Library's collection, you can do a subject search for "film noir" in the online catalog. That search will show you what film titles are classified as film noir as well as books and other items about Film Noir.
As you look at the list under Film Noir, the subject headings which include "history and criticism" talk about the genre itself. The headings which also include a country name are specifically talking about Film Noir in that country.
You can also do a subject search for "noir fiction." That will lead you to the noir novels and criticism of the literature form of noir.
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film noirCall number range PN 1995.9 .F54 on Baker Level 4.
Introductory reading(s)
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Columbia noir: a complete filmography, 1940-1962 by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1999 .C57 B54 2015ISBN: 9780786470143This filmography covers the noir titles released in the classic noir era, October 1940 to June 1962. All sub-genres are covered including British, western and science fiction. -
East Asian film noir: transnational encounters and intercultural dialogue by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .E19 E37 2015ISBN: 9781780760094Film noir has been understood as a genre exclusive to Hollywood. But classical US noir's downbeat sensibility also finds expression in later films from Japan, South Korea and China (including Hong Kong) and Taiwan, that have both participated in and been excluded from circuits of global-noir traffic, past and present. East Asian Film Noir is the first book to explore these films and the filmmakers who made them. Looking at a range of examples from the 1950s to the present - including The Crimson Kimono, Brother, Ghost in the Shell, Nowhere to Hide, Duelist- and Rebels of the Neon God - this work conceptualizes and articulates an internationally situated 'East Asian film noir'. ... -
Film noir: a comprehensive, illustrated reference to movies, terms, and persons byCall Number: Baker-Berry Ref. PN 1995.9 .F54 S74 1995This book is a guide to all of the films in this genre. Films listed in this book stop with the early 1990's.
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Film noir guide: 745 films of the classic era, 1940-1959 by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 K43 2003ISBN: 9780786463664More than 700 films from the classic period of film noir (1940 to 1959) are presented in this exhaustive reference book--such films as The Accused, Among the Living, The Asphalt Jungle, Baby Face Nelson, Bait, The Beat Generation, The Naked City, and more. For each film, the following information is provided: the title, release date, main performers, screenwriter(s), director(s), type of noir, thematic content, a rating based on the five-star system, and a plot synopsis that does not reveal the ending. -
Historical dictionary of film noir by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780810873780Film noir, literally 'black cinema,' is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. ...
Selected book titles
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America noir: underground writers and filmmakers of the postwar era by Call Number: Baker-Berry PS 374 .P63 C63 2000ISBN: 9781560988137An examination of how the subterranean pulp genres of crime novels, B-movies, & science fiction helped express the underlying aspects of confusion & alienation during the period of postwar confidence & prosperity. The works of Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Rod Serling & The Twilight Zone, Patricia Highsmith, & Roger Corman, along with others are closely examined. -
Black & white & noir: America's pulp modernism by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 R33 2002ISBN: 9780231114813Black & White & Noir explores America's pulp modernism through penetrating readings of the noir sensibility lurking in an eclectic array of media: Office of War Information photography, women's experimental films, and African-American novels, among others. It traces the dark edges of cultural detritus blowing across the postwar landscape, finding in pulp a political theory that helps explain America's fascination with lurid spectacles of crime. ... -
Dames in the driver's seat: rereading film noir by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 W34 2005ISBN: 9780292709669With its focus on dangerous, determined femmes fatales, hardboiled detectives, and crimes that almost-but-never-quite succeed, film noir has long been popular with moviegoers and film critics alike. Film noir was a staple of classical Hollywood filmmaking during the years 1941-1958 and has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since the 1990s. Dames in the Driver's Seat offers new views of both classical-era and contemporary noirs through the lenses of gender, class, and race. ... -
Dangerous dames: women and representation in the Weimar street film and film noir by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F44 W35 1999ISBN: 9780821412701Both film noir and the Weimar street film hold a continuing fascination for film spectators and film theorists alike. The female characters, especially the alluring femmes fatales, remain a focus for critical and popular attention. In the tradition of such attention, Dangerous Dames focuses on the femme fatale and her antithesis, the femme attrapée. Unlike most theorists, Jans Wager examines these archetypes from the perspective of the female spectator and rejects the persistence of vision that allows a reading of these female characters only as representations of unstable postwar masculinity. ... -
Film noir by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 S68 2002ISBN: 9780582437128Film Noir is an overview of an often celebrated, but also contested, body of films. It discusses film noir as a cultural phenomenon whose history is more extensive and diverse than American black and white crime thrillers of the forties. An extended Background Chapter situates film noir within its cultural context, describing its origin in German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism and in developments within American genres, the gangster/crime thriller, horror and the Gothic romance and its possible relationship to changes in American society. ... -
Film noir: from Berlin to Sin City by Call Number: Baker/Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 B68 2005ISBN: 9781904764502Film Noir explores the murky world of a genre responsible for many of film's most enduring images. Mark Bould discusses problems of definition and the often ambiguous nature of film noir and looks at modern films that could be called neo-noir. Iconic and enduring, film noir attracted great stars (Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum, Lancaster), many of the best directors of the era (Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Hawks, Siodmak, Welles) and this book is an indispensible guide to this popular genre. -
Film noir reader 4 by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 F64 2004ISBN: 9780879103057Film Noir Reader 4 moves in a different direction. Its purpose is to identify the key films and motifs of noir and to analyze in depth the prototypical pictures that, while vivid examples of certain cinematic themes, bend and break their molds to find new ways to enthrall and frighten us. ... -
French film noir by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 B87 2001ISBN: 9780714530369Publication Date: 2001-04-01From the seething internal aftermath of the German Occupation to the stylish radicalism of the New Wave and the slick post-modern fantasies of today, French directors such as Melville, Becker, Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol have adapted American crime movie conventions to create their own cinema of good and evil. Fully illustrated with stills from a wide selection of movies, French Film Noir also contains a complete filmography listing over 100 films. ... -
More than night: film noir in its contexts by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 N37 1998ISBN: 9780520212947"Film noir" evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and 1950s--melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. In More Than Night, James Naremore discusses these pictures, but he also shows that the central term is more complex and paradoxical than we realize. Film noir refers both to an important cinematic legacy and to an idea we have projected onto the past. ... -
The philosophy of film noir by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .F54 P55 2006ISBN: 9780813123776From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), the classic film noir is easily recognizable for its unusual lighting, sinister plots, and feeling of paranoia. For critics and fans alike, these films defined an era. The Philosophy of Film Noir explores philosophical themes and ideas inherent in classic noir and neo-noir films, establishing connections to diverse thinkers ranging from Camus to the Frankfurt School. ...
Other library resource(s)
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The best of film noirCall Number: Jones Media DVD #232This DVD uses over 30 film clips and interviews to illustrate the aspects of the film noir genre. Jeffrey Wells discusses The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, Kiss Me Deadly, D.O.A., Out of the Past, Against All Odds, Laura and Kiss of Death.
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Film noir from Oxford Bibliographies Online by
Call Number: Electronic resourceFilm noir emerged out of a nexus of American sociopolitical crises, including the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It presented the underbelly of the traditionally optimistic and utopian “American Dream” and drew upon numerous cultural influences, such as German Expressionism, American hard-boiled fiction, French Poetic Realism of the 1930s, tabloid journalism, Italian neorealism and American postwar documentary filmmaking. ...
Finding articles & journal titles
Articles and other writings about movies can be found in many publications. Our collection does not include a journal or magazine which looks exclusively at film noir. Other film journals within our collection will cover film noir. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find relevant articles.
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Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about film noir. -
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected film noir movie titles
To find more film noir titles, search the library's online catalog.
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5 against the house by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #11274ISBN: 9781435965058Four Korean war vets dream up a college prank to rob a casino, convincing the girlfriend of one of them to help. Problems arise when one of the vets, who suffers from a war injury, turns the prank serious. -
The asphalt jungle by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2198ISBN: 9780790789651An aging criminal is released from prison and decides to assemble the old gang to go on one last heist. -
Aventurera by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2918ISBN: 9781565804128Elena tries to make a new life for herself after her mother leaves her father and kills himself, but she is drugged, seduced, and forced to work as a dancer/call girl in a nightclub. She soon rises to stardom as a dancer, but still plots revenge and escape. -
Blood simple by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2590ISBN: 9780783261133A jealous husband hires a detective to murder his wife and her lover. -
The Blue GardeniaCall Number: Jones Media DVD #1282Norah Larkin is a working girl who wakes up a murderess after passing out in the apartment of brutish playboy Harry Prebble. Branded "The Blue Gardenia" by a sensational columnist, Norah dodges dragnets, informants and the cruel hand of fate as she struggles to conceal her involvement with Prebble, and to remember the details of her ill-fated night. As her hopes for justice fade, she decides to gamble her future on the journalist who transformed her into such a notorious figure. -
Born to kill by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #4039ISBN: 9780780650657A classic film noir featuring a cold-hearted killer named Sam Wild who kills two innocent people and actively pursues the woman who finds the bodies, all while being married to the woman's half-sister. -
Clash by night by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #4038ISBN: 9780780650671A party girl decides she has had enough of the wild lifestyle and returns to her childhood home, where she finds security with a new husband but soon finds herself in an affair with his best friend. -
Dead end by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2298ISBN: 9780792865797On the mean streets on New York's Lower East Side, Drina hopes to save her brother from a life of crime. But notorious hoodlum Baby Face Martin has come back to his old haunts looking for trouble and threatening to drag the boy down with him. Drina turns to her childhood friend Dave for help. But can he stop Martin without becoming just like him? -
Gun crazy by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2197A greedy sideshow sharp-shooter marries an ex-army man, then leads him down the road to crime for easy money. Includes a bank robbery sequence, noted for being filmed in one shot. -
Illegal / The big steal by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #5509ISBN: 9781419856594Illegal: Ambitious D.A. Victor Scott zealously prosecutes edition Clary for a woman's murder. But as Clary walks to the electric chair, Scott receives evidence that exonerates the condemned man. Realizing that he's made a terrible mistake he tries to stop the execution, but is too late.
The Big Steal: Jane and Duke (alias Capt. Blake) accidentally meet in Vera Cruz while chasing flim-flam man Fiske. Soon the local Inspector General (El Gato) is involved. ... -
I want to live!Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1634A screen adaptation of the dramatic events in the life of a "B-Girl," Barbara Graham, a vagrant prostitute and fast-living party girl, which led to a sensational murder trial and afterwards, her execution in the gas chamber despite growing doubts about her guilt. -
Ride the pink horse by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #19251ISBN: 9781604659672A tough-talking former GI comes to a small New Mexico town to shake down a gangster who killed his best friend; events turn out neither as planned nor at all well. -
Riot in cell block 11 by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #17482ISBN: 9781604658491A sensational and high-octane but economically constructed drama set in a maximum-security penitentiary. -
Time without pity by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2585ISBN: 9780780028692Tension rises to a fevered pitch in this psychological thriller about an alcoholic, long-absent father who has one day to save his son from the gallows.
Internet resources
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10 Shades of NoirAn issue of In Focus devoted to film noir.
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Film noir from Wikipedia
The entry from Wikipedia.
