This seminar will explore the crime dramas of the Hollywood studio era during World War II and the immediate post-war context. Termed by French film critics as film noir, the genre developed during the 1940s into an influential narrative form that shapes representations of gender dynamics, legal transgression, and the American urban landscape until today. This course will give an introduction to the genre, offer analytical readings of selected key movies from the 1940s, and shape an understanding of how to write about film. In the final sections of this seminar, transformations of the genre in more contemporary contexts will also be addressed.
- Dozent/in: Marcel Hartwig