American Neo-Noir: The Movie Never Ends (Applause Books)

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American Neo-Noir: The Movie Never Ends (Applause Books) Details

Review ''Silver and Ursini have delivered yet another wholly readable, instantly addictive long-form essay on a genre beloved by moviegoers who may not know it's a genre at all. They can now, emerging with a greater understanding … and an overbrimming Netflix queue.'' --Flick AttackAlain Silver and James Ursini have contributed significantly to the study of film noir with a number of books on the subject including The Noir Style and The Film Noir Reader series. In their latest joint effort, American Neo-noir: the movie never ends, they turn their attention to post-classic period noir. The book is insightful, beautifully illustrated and well written, but also a bit overwhelming…The authors do an excellent job... of portraying how the noir narrative has changed over the decades, morphing to fit the needs of its contemporary audience. --Noir City Read more About the Author Alain Silver (Santa Monica, CA) is the author of The Samurai Film and The Noir Style. With James Ursini he coedited Film Noir: The Encyclopedia and seven readers on film noir and the horror and gangster genres. His produced screenplays include the Showtime feature Time at the Top.James Ursini (Santa Monica, CA) cowrote The Zombie Film, The Vampire Film, and Film Noir Graphics with Alain Silver. His other books include Femme Fatale, Cinema of Obsession, and Directors on the Edge. Together Silver and Ursini have done audio-video commentaries for over two dozen noir DVD releases. Read more

Reviews

I completely understand the customer reviewer who gave this one star and only liked the filmography at the end. Like other projects by these authors, this book does not readily separate the great and the good from the mediocre. Personally, while recognizing this book isn't ideal for someone seeking the absolute best of post-expressionist cinema (if such a goal is possible), I appreciate such an impartial approach. By refusing to favor high-brow over low-brow works, the book truly embraces Neo-Noir as an art form. It opens up a discussion in which RED ROCK WEST and U-TURN can be just as valid as works of art as CHINATOWN and TAXI DRIVER.Having conceded that this book may not be ideal for someone merely wanting to build a collection, I need to acknowledge that it can be easily re-purposed as such. The filmography is followed by a thorough index which (obviously) leads one back to remarks on the films. Seeing where a given movie is placed within the thoughtfully-labeled chapters does often, in itself, shed a great deal of light. As with other works written or edited by Alain Silver, the critique of each film may exceed a mere review, however it frequently falls short of higher criticism. What remains is a sort of undergraduate essay on the movies under discussion. Finding their context within the greater intent of the book (as delineated by the chapter headings) may be the most rewarding part of reading it.What remains: enjoying this book from page 1 to page 259 will acquaint you with the best of post-noir cinema,as well as its many offshoots that will cause you to question whether this is a real genre or whether the authors have gone mad. Either way, you are left with a book that has been constructed so that you can use it in whatever way you had hoped.

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