Overview

American Film Noir Genres, Characters, and Settings argues that film noir style evolved out of American literature prior to the 1930s and continues to evolve long after the classic films that defined its presence in cinema. While many critics suggest that the film noir tradition ceased after the mid-1950s, labeling similar films produced later as ‘neo-noir’, Harold Hellwig contends that film noir itself has continued to evolve beyond cinema to include television series such as CSI, Have Gun Will Travel, and Seinfeld, among others. Hellwig posits that, rather than being a single genre in and of itself, film noir comprises several genres, including detective procedurals, science fiction, the Western, and even comedy. This book examines different elements of American film noir – including the characters and settings it is often defined by – and its contexts within different adaptations in both film and television. Scholars of film studies, American literature, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.

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9781666916515

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Reviews

Harold Hellwig's boldly expansive account of film noir, which finds room for Casablanca, Have Gun, Will Travel, and Frasier, with excursions to novelists from William Faulkner to Donna Leon, makes an intriguing case for rooting this defiantly marginal genre in the heart of American readings of European Romanticism. Cultural historians take note. --Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware

Author Information

Harold Hellwig is associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Idaho State University.

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