[.ca] Noir Style (ISBN 0879517220)

From Amazon.com:
Standard histories of film noir commence the coining of the term (which means "black film") by French writers in the years after the war when they saw a new mingling of grit, wit, and swooning Thanatos in movies like The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. Alain Silver's and James Ursini's nearly libidinous collection of "duo-tone" (i.e., black and white) movie stills reaches far afield, finding noir's style radiating from the Brucke painters in the 1920s, Edward Hopper's wee-small-hours townscapes of the 1940s, and Weegee's bloody, beautiful photos. In page after oversized page, the authors park perceptive readings beside images of classic rainy streets (Underworld, USA, The Money Trap), doomy women in lipstick (Laura, Gilda), disturbed interiors (Sunset Boulevard), and wrenching ironies (DOA). The commentary reveals how light, frame, composition, body language, and a few other irreducibles charge individual scenes and contribute to the look of noir as a whole, beginning with gangster and horror films in the 1930s and closing with Silence of the Lambs in 1992. The texts lapse occasionally into heavy breathing about Meaning, but the authors invite us to get what we want from this most stylish of American movie genres by just flipping the pages. With hardly a cliché image in the bunch, we can eagerly fall afresh into Jane Russell's outstretched arms (in Macao), zoom down the black sidewalk stretching behind a dying John Garfield (in He Ran All the Way), and contemplate once more the tissue of lies between Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. --Lyall Bush

Noir Gold!:
Alain Silver has already written the definitive book on the subject with his (and Elizabeth Ward) 'Film Noir: An encyclopaedic reference to the American style' and now with 'The Noir Style' he has written the definitive book about the look of these movies. Most critics agree that style was one of the main elements of this genre and Paul Schrader went further to suggest that noir style was working out the conflict visually. Where would this kind of movie be without its deep shadows and expressive lighting? With over two hundred production stills the authors explore the various characteristics and meanings of this essentially American art form. What makes the book so wonderful for me, apart from the excellent design by Bernard Schleifer, are the stills, mostly large one to a page and beautifully printed as 175 screen duotones, they leap off the page. Each photo has a very comprehensive caption. As well as the seven chapters there are several spreads called 'Motif' where certain visual treatments are examined in more detail, prison bars, dream and flashback, face and gesture, sexual debasement, night and the wheel and one I thought particularly interesting about photographer Weegee (his real name was Arthur Fellig and he got his obscure nickname from his job, in the twenties, at The New York Times, where he worked in the photo darkrooms removing excess water from prints before they were dried, he did this with a squeegee) he covered New York city for various tabloid papers and his style was a photographic version of the noir movies. Page forty-seven shows one of his photos of a dead man on a city pavement, wearing a blood soaked shirt, over the page is a still of Kirk Douglas playing dead from the movie 'Out of the Past', they actually have very little in common, one is sanitised reel life the other is real life. 'The Noir Style' could not be any better and with Silver's 'Film Noir' encyclopaedia you will have a very full account of this fascinating movie genre. One other noir film book I have enjoyed is 'Dark City' by Eddie Muller, a detailed text and picture study. A neat touch is that Muller's written the book in the language style of the hardboiled private eye books of the forties...all three books hit the bull's eye!

Stunning Stills of Symbolic Cinematic Stylings!:
Anyone who has ever seen The Maltese Falcon or Sunset Boulevard will recognize that the film noir style is much more than just a black-and-white movie. The harsh contrasts of light and dark subtly reinforce the emotion of the actors and actresses and jab us with their intensity. The shadows deliberately evoke a sense of fate or emotional conflict that help us to understand the story better. Patterns of bars, shadows, and mirrors suggest the rest of the plot. Although I had always felt these atmospheric effects and loved them in noir films, I could not articulate how they are accomplished. In this remarkable book, you will examine 172 photographs and supporting essays that will give you both a language for and a greater appreciation of the style's elements. The book is connected to noir's origins as well as its future in the neo-noir of the 1990s. I found it very helpful to see the kind of images that inspired the noir directors and lighting experts to create the incredible effects. The authors know their subject very well, and have selected outstanding examples for your pleasure. The photographs are stunning, and I found them simply irresistible. Photographs were used rather than film frames because photographs reproduce better, but most of the stills were actually used in a movie. Unless you are a film student, you will probably not have seen many of these before. Focusing on one or two actors and actresses in most cases, you will see much of the best of the style. I came away much more impressed with the acting in these scenes as I better understood the subtle conflicts that were explained in the essays to help me see how a scene often sets up to express four or five different ideas. The types of scenes were grouped into chapters and subchapters that made the styles easier to understand, as you peruse several examples . . . the better to see the similarities and differences. One section is on Night and the City, another on Femme Fatales, a third on portraying dee psychological problems in the characters, a fourth on the reckless moment that dooms the characters, and a fifth on the use of mirrors and other doppelganger devices to exhibit divisions in motives and personality. There is an introductory chapter on the origins of noir, and a concluding one on neo-noir that shows the scenes that inspired the new noir movies of the 1990s (such as the Silence of the Lambs). You might think that it would be depressing looking at all of these doomed, conflicted people. Actually, I had the opposite feeling, becoming more alive as I interacted with their intensity. Most of the men are very handsome, and the women georgeous so there is a baseline of physical beauty that is very appealing. This draws us into feeling more for them, as they face their doom. If you love movies, I suspect you'll have the same reaction. Having become more familiar with the symbolism and methods of noir, you should begin to notice cases where television, movies, and advertising today subtly work to influence your mood. This should make you more aware of how your emotions can be manipulated and make you more likely to overcome inappropriate influences on your actions. For more on that subject, read Robert Cialdini's book, Influence. Think for yourself, and enjoy! Donald Mitchell (donmitch@2000percentsolution.com)

Poor production values sink the project:
While the idea of having two of the most knowledgeable scholars of the noir film host a coffee-table art book on the topic sounds promising, the resulting product is heinously flawed. Despite the brevity of the text, a blocky font makes it difficult to read. The 'duotone' reproduction is achieved by imposing blue plate on the black plate--making vintage photographs resemble a poorly adjusted television screen. Further, the large reproductions merely expose the grain, scratches, and dust spots that any skilled retoucher could have removed. Pick up Mark Viera's SIN IN SOFT FOCUS: PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD and see how this book should have looked.

No coffeetable should be without it....:
For anyone who loves the shadowy world of film noir this collection of full page photo's is a great gift.

Coffee Table Noir:
A large, handsome book, suitably published in black and white. If you are a fan of the Noir genre, this belongs on your coffee table. The pictures, from the collections of the authors, are evocative of their milieu, illustrating the classic noir films of the 40's and 50's. There isn't quite as much information about each picture as I would like, and for a couple, such as the cover and frontspiece, no information at all. This book is a supplement to the Noir Readers of the authors, and as such, serves it's purpose well. Do not buy this as a text, but for illustrative purposes. Enjoy looking at the chilling dark dangerous ladies, the crooked cops, the doomed characters. Great pictures.