Classic French Noir

Gender and the Cinema of Fatal Desire

Deborah Walker-Morrison (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

272 Seiten

2020
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-15744-6 (ISBN)

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French film noir has long been seen as a phenomenon distinct from its Hollywood counterpart. This book - an innovative departure from conventional noir scholarship - now adopts a biocultural approach to exploring the French genre through the years 1941-1959. Chapters reveal noir as a product of the social and cultural factors at play in occupied, liberated and post-war France: marked by malaise at military defeat, Nazi collaboration and the impact of industrialisation. Furthermore, the book uncovers the evolutionary mechanisms of sexuality and reproduction beneath the national context that drive gendered behaviour on screen.
During this period, for example, the emerging urgent demand for population growth, coupled with the severe shortage of eligible males, rendered the mating game particularly perilous for traditional women beginning to enter the workplace. This explains the cynical yet seductive behaviour of the femme fatale. Deborah Walker-Morrison focuses on the dangerous, often deadly, desires of an array of male and female character-types: moving past the celebrated, fatal `femme' to tragic heroines, psychopathic narcissists, fatal `hommes' and gangster anti-heroes. The book re-examines productions by directors such as Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Becker and Jules Dassin and pulls together strands of sociological, biological, psychological and evolutionary science to create an illuminating study of the intense human passions underlying the cut-throat world of noir.

Deborah Walker-Morrison is Associate Professor of French at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has published widely on French cinema and is co-author (with Alistair Rolls) of French and American Noir: Dark Crossings (2009).

Dedication
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
I. Setting the Scene
1. Introduction
3–17
2. Fatal(e) Desire in French Poetic Realism
18–28

II. The Long Shadow of War
3. Looking for the Light
31–49
4. Too Many Women? War and Fatal(e) Desire
50–68

III. Cherchez La Femme
5. Fatal(e) Passions: Tragic Fatalitaires and Star-Crossed Lovers
71–93
6. ’Thou Shalt Not Covet’: Adulterous Fatalitaires
94–112
7. Bad Girls
113–136

IV. Cherchez L’Homme
8. Fatal Men
139–161
9. Law Enforcers Meet the Femme
162–182
10. Love and Money: Gender and Consumption in Gangster Noir
183–204

V. Conclusion
Classic French Noir: The Dark Side of ’Quality’ Cinema (1946–59)
207–214

Appendices
Appendix 1: 101 French Films Noirs217–222
Appendix 2: Tables223–225

Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	01.05.2020
Zusatzinfo	30 bw illus
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	138 x 216 mm
Gewicht	340 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-350-15744-9 / 1350157449
ISBN-13	978-1-350-15744-6 / 9781350157446
Zustand	Neuware