See how long it will take you to get to college. Please select the campus of the course you wish to study.
American films were banned in Occupied France during WWII. In 1946, French critics
coined the term ‘film noir’ to describe what appeared to be a common set of
characteristics in many of the films they could now watch: a criminal world, the
doomed protagonist, the femme fatale, low-key lighting, unbalanced composition, and
often low-budget aesthetics. But is film noir a genre? Why did it emerge in the United
States, at that time? And what was the influence of the American ‘hard-boiled’ stories
of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler?
On this course we’ll look at twelve classic American films of the 1940s and 1950s to
explore these and other questions about film noir, and some of the stories on which
they were based.
This course is for anyone with an interest in discovering more about film noir and
classic American cinema. No previous experience is required.
The precise selection will be circulated closer to the course starting date, to ensure that
as many as possible are readily available for viewing, but a representative list would be:
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944), Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945), Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945), Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Build My Gallows High (aka Out of the Past) (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) and Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). By the end of the course you should be able to: - understand some of the key artistic, economic, industrial and social circumstances that influence the development of film history - assess critical arguments about film genres - discuss some of the relationships between source stories and film adaptations
Each class will begin by considering everyone’s first responses to that week’s films. We shall open up these ideas to further discussion, select scenes and sequences for closer analysis, and highlight some of the most important historical and critical contexts surrounding the films. Particular topics may be discussed in smaller groups. There is no formal assessment on this course, but your progress will be assessed via individual learning plans and class participation.
My aim is to select key films that are readily available on free-to-view or easily accessible platforms for the duration of the course. Many films will be available as cheap second-hand DVDs. It’s possible that a cancellable monthly subscription to a streaming service may be desirable. The total cost of accessing the films will be approximately £0-20.
Additional films will be recommended during the course, and Moodle links will be supplied to articles and other online materials, but your only required preparation will be watching the films before the class.
There is the possibility of a follow-up course at Mary Ward Centre in the following academic year. This would expand the parameters to include earlier (‘proto-noir’), later (‘neo-noir’), non-American and foreign-language films, alongside others that challenge in various ways the stricter generic definitions of film noir.
See how long it will take you to get to college. Please select the campus of the course you wish to study.