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Book Cover
E-book
Author Dixon, Wheeler W., 1950-

Title Film noir and the cinema of paranoia / Wheeler Winston Dixon
Published Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, ©2009

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 198 pages) : illustrations
Contents The dream of return -- The postwar bubble -- The 1950s death trip -- The flip side of the 1960s -- The failure of culture -- Living in fear -- Appendix: A galleryof classi noir 'heavies.'
Summary Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is an overview of 20th- and 21st-century noir and fatalist film practice from 1945 onwards. The book demonstrates the ways in which American cinema has inculcated a climate of fear in our daily lives, as reinforced, starting in the 1950s, by television, and later videocassettes, the web, and the Internet, to create, by the early 21st century a hypersurveillant atmosphere in which no one can avoid the barrage of images that continually assault our senses. The book begins with the return of American soldiers from World War II, 'liberated' from war in the Pacific by the newly created atomic bomb, which will come to rule American consciousness through much of the 1950s and 1960s and then, in a newer, more small-scale way, become a fixture of terrorist hardware in the post-paranoid ear of the 21st century. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is constructed in six chapters, each highlighting a particular 'raising of the cinematic stakes' in the creation of a completely immersible universe of images. Selling points: Expands the definition of noir to include numerous lesser known works. Deals with Red Scare films of the 1950s in the US. Examines the 'dark side' of the 1960s, or films that questioned the emerging counterculture. Explores such neo-noir films as The Last Seduction (1993), Angel Heart (1987), The Grifters (1990), Red Rock West (1993), The Usual Suspects (1995), Mulholland Drive (2001), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Memento (2000). Details the 'noir' aspects of the cybernetic age, both in online and videogame uses
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-185) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Film noir -- United States -- History and criticism
Film noir -- Great Britain -- History and criticism
PERFORMING ARTS -- Film & Video -- Reference.
PERFORMING ARTS -- Film & Video -- General.
Film noir
Film noir
Film noir.
Great Britain
United States
USA
Genre/Form Electronic books
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780748630318
0748630317
9786612087936
6612087935
9781282087934
1282087932
0748653619
9780748653614
1474467768
9781474467766