Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary American CinemaClassic film noir was Hollywood's 'dark cinema' of crime and corruption; a genre underpinned by a tone of existential cynicism which stripped bare the myth of the American Dream and offered a bleak, nightmarish vision of a fragmented society that rhymed with many of the social realities of forties and fifties America. Mean Streets and Raging Bulls explores how, since its apparent demise in the late fifties, the noir genre has been revitalized during the post-studio era. The book is divided into two sections. In the first, the evolution of film noir is contextualized in relation to both American cinema's industrial transformation and the post-Depression history of the United States. In the second, the evolution of neo-noir and its relation to classic film noir is illustrated by detailed reference to representative texts including Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975), Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1984), After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985), Sea of Love (Harold Becker, 1989), Resevoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), and Romeo is Bleeding (Peter Medak, 1994). |
Contents
1 | |
9 | |
The Legacy of Film Noir | 61 |
Notes | 145 |
Select Filmography of American Film Noir | 163 |
Bibliography | 173 |
Index | 189 |
About the Author | 199 |
Other editions - View all
Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary ... Richard Martin No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
African-American Alain Silver American cinema American society assassination Blood Simple Body Heat Book of Film British Film Institute Chinatown City classic film noir classic noir classical Hollywood Coen crime culture Dark death detective economic eighties and nineties example Faber False Move femme fatale fiction fifties figure film noir Film Noir London Film Noir Reader film's filmmakers forties fragmentation Frank Fritz Lang hard-boiled Hollywood renaissance identity investigation Jack Jake James Ursini Eds John John Dahl killed Klute late sixties mainstream Martin Scorsese masculine Mean Streets Michael Miller's Crossing Mona Moseby motif Movie Book murder neo-noir Night Moves noir genre noir texts paranoia patriarchal corruption Paul Paul Schrader political postmodern production psychological Raging Bull Reservoir Dogs Richard Robert Romeo is Bleeding Schrader screen Sea of Love seventies neo-noir sexual anxiety Silver and James social stylistic Tarantino Taxi Driver television thematic tion tradition Travis Travis's viewer violence visual witness woman