Film Noir

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Trip Down These Mean Streets
Review: This is a textbook designed to introduce film noir to college students. However, it could be read with profit by anyone with an interest in the film noir phenomenon.

Spicer packs an incredible amount of information in the small space he has. He refers to the latest books and is incredibly thorough. He does a fine job on the origins of film noir, covering not only "tough guy" authors and German expressionism, but also Weimar "street films," French poetic realism and expressionism in American film before noir.

What I found especially interesting was the way Spicer continually breaks down noir and neo-noir into different eras. He sees a difference between noir of the Forties and Fifies, and he distinguishes between early neo-noir and late neo-noir, with Body Heat being the breaking point. I found that very useful, since the neo-noir era has lasted so long by now. It is hard to think of The Long Goodbye and Reservoir Dogs as fitting in the same era, so it is good to have a distinguishing framework.

Spicer also covers British film noir, and he breaks that down into different eras as well. To someone very familiar with the American noir cannon, this is like discovering a new continent of films.

So I would strongly urge any film noir enthusiast to get Spicer's book. You will learn something you didn't know before, or find out about films you will want to see.

So this is a book that