Course Description & Objectives

Incorporating such elements as expressionism, hard-boiled fiction and dirty realism to enact its critique of social institutions, film noir still continually troubles attempts at categorisation. Is noir a genre, a style, or something else entirely? Moreover, why does a cycle of films that enjoyed their initial popularity from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s continue to inspire the imagination of contemporary filmmakers? Drawing on various models of genre theory, we will attempt to formulate a working definition of this notoriously amorphous category. Areas of analysis will include its recurring thematic, stylistic and rhetorical configurations.

Given noir’s tendencies toward explicit social criticism, we will also explore the means by which this category is informed by and responds to the political climate of the periods in which it is produced.

• How does a social landscape transformed by World War II and the dawning of the Cold War give rise to this pessimistic cycle of films?
• What might some of the reasons be for noir’s political discontent during this period, and how did this discontent draw the attention of investigative authorities?
• Similarly, why does noir become a more permanent fixture from the Watergate era onward?
• Why is film noir often obsessed with poisonous heterosexual relationships and how does it represent the gender roles of its protagonists?
• Why does contemporary noir address racial tensions in the United States more explicitly than during the studio era?

Ultimately, we will work towards understanding how this dynamic filmic category not only challenges traditional strategies of classification, but also various cultural and ideological norms.