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Film noir remains one of the most enduring legacies of 1940s and '50s Hollywood. Populated by double-crossing, unsavory characters, this pioneering film style explored a shadow side of American life during a period of tremendous prosperity and optimism. Edward Dimendberg compellingly demonstrates how film noir is preoccupied with modernity - particularly the urban landscape. The originality of Dimendberg's approach lies in his examining these films in tandem with historical developments in architecture, city planning, and modern communications systems. He confirms that noir is not simply a reflection of modernity but a virtual continuation of the spaces of the metropolis. He convincingly shows that Hollywood's dark thrillers of the post-war decades were determined by the same forces that shaped the city itself. Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Naked City alongside many lesser-known works, Dimendberg masterfully interweaves film history and urban history while perceptively analysing works by Raymond Chandler, Edward Hopper, Siegfried Kracauer, and Henri Lefebvre. A bold intervention in cultural studies and a major contribution to film history, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity will provoke debate by cinema scholars, urban historians, and students of modern culture - and will captivate admirers of a vital period in American cinema.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Introduction
• 1 Naked Cities
• 2 Centripetal Space
• 3 Walking Cures
• 4 Centrifugal Space
• 5 Simultaneity, the Media Environment, and the End of Film Noir
• Notes
• Index

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CHOICE Review

Reading what he calls the "film noir cycle" against theories of urban design, contemporary architecture, and modern space, Dimendberg (German studies, film and video studies, and architecture, Univ. of Michigan) offers a stunning and successful interdisciplinary juxtaposition of film studies and urban studies. Instead of emphasizing the masculine hero or the femme fatale of film noir, the author foregrounds urban anxiety, focusing on the way that city blocks are laid out and photographed, on the cinematic sense of sidewalks, streets, and highways. Organized by broad topics--"Naked Cities," "Centripetal Space," "Centrifugal Space," "Simultaneity"--the book takes the reader through dozens of film noirs, from the most famous (Double Indemnity, 1944) to the rarely seen (Plunder Road, 1957). The author sets up parallels between these movies and all sorts of urban theorists, from Henri Lefebvre to Walter Benjamin and Kevin Lynch. The juxtapositions are creative and nearly always beautifully apt. Dimendberg's book will make readers realize once and for all that they watch film noir not only for the tough guys and crafty dames but also for the insights these films offer into the ways that American cities were conceived and perceived in the 1940s and 1950s. ^BSumming Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. S. C. Dillon Bates College