San Antonio College Library

From the Back Cover: The American film noir, the popular genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940s and 1950s, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and, in doing so, created unique narrative structures in order to speak of that darkness....

"Featuring rumpled PIs, shyster lawyers, corrupt politicians, doublecrossers, femmes fatales, and of course losers who find themselves down on their luck yet again, film noir is a perennially popular cinematic genre. It is also an international one. A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir contains the most extensive coverage yet of the US output of film noir, with entries on well over 2,000 US noirs and neonoirs. But the book goes far further than...

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.

"The Art of Noir brilliantly showcases the most glorious noir posters from Hollywood and around the world. The films represented in the 338 arresting posters, lobby cards, and other promotional material range from such hard-boiled detective classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, to movies steeped in a brew of post-war cynicism, like The Killers, Night and the City, and Gun Crazy, to rare archive films such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride, Christmas...

Private eye Jake Gittes, living off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-war Southern California is hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair. Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together for one, unforgettable night in Chinatown.

This assessment of black film history distinguishes between American films that are controlled by Blacks and those which utilize black talent, but are controlled by Whites. The study ranges from the earliest black involvement in Hollywood to present feminist influences in black productions.

When Marty, the owner of a Texas backwoods bar, hires a man to kill his cheating wife and her boyfriend, he opens a door into the criminal world that he'll never be able to shut. The sleazy hit man decides instead to shoot Marty, thereby collecting his unearned fee and eliminating the only person who could implicate him-- or so he thinks.

A lawyer has a love affair with a woman and gets involved in a plot to kill her husband.