Just Finished Reading: Somewhere in the Night – Film Noir and the American City by Nicholas Christopher.

Feeling much more than its 266 pages (in a good way) this was an excellent cultural and historical investigation into Film Noir and the place of the American city within the genre. Christopher treats the city more as a stock character, like the Femme Fatale, rather than a mere backdrop against which the action develops and he makes a very good case to support it.

Film Noir is essentially American and dates, for very good historical and cultural reasons, from the Second World War. Its dark disturbing themes are laced through with themes of Totalitarianism, Atomic destruction, Psychoanalysis, Urbanisation, Political and personal corruption and the ever present possibility of violence. Despite its antecedents in the European movies of the 20’s and 30’s Film Noir is a mid 20th Century American art form par excellence. The author maintains that it just couldn’t have happened anywhere else – at least in the way it emerged from Hollywood. Only the confluence of events – the end of World War II, the fear of the Russians and especially Atomic destruction (already visited on Japan), the growing craze of Psychoanalysis and the burgeoning economy with its ever increasing supply of consumer durables could have produced this dark mirror of a movie genre – reflecting back on its audiences their deep fears and paranoia which later led to the insanity of McCarthyism.

This is a well researched, engaging and stimulating read. I certainly learnt a great deal about a movie style I have long enjoyed in comparative ignorance until now. It has also helped me focus on acquiring a collection of Noir movies on DVD that I have been slowly working through over the last few months. I’m positive that some of them at least will be showing up in my Favourite Movies posts. I shall be watching and appraising them with ‘new eyes’ after reading this book – so be warned. A must read for anyone interested is this most fascinating of movie genres.