FILM-910 Film Noir
This course will explore the literary and cinematic world of film noir. A critical term that refers to certain American films of the 1940s and 1950s and to American detective fiction of the same period, so called roman noir. The class will examine classic, cinematic examples of the genre of film noir, read a number of canonical detective novels, and investigate the historical context out of which the fiction and films emerged. The class will explore how film noire translated the literary conventions of the detective novel are translated into the language of cinema and are transformed. The course will reconstruct the historical context out of which American detective fiction and film noir materialized.