European Film Noir

Abstract

The most transnational of genres, film noir is nonetheless, as Andrew Spicer points out in his introduction to European Film Noir, hailed as a quintessentially American genre. While the French and British traditions of noir cinema have gained some recognition recently (not least through citation by contemporary American filmmakers), there has been little comprehensive study of non-American film noir. This collection goes a long way to fill this gap, and to establish European cinema not merely as a provider of early references to what was to become an American canon, but as the site of diverse film noir traditions in their own right. Bringing together key specialists, this collection provides diachronic studies of French, British, German, Spanish and Italian cinemas. Ginette Vincendeau offers a typically captivating account of film noir as a French tradition, weaving together an investigation of the historical context with a revealing analysis of key thematic and stylistic elements. She traces this tradition back to nineteenth-century French literature, and links its development in film form to the success of the hard-boiled American novel (translated for the famous Série noire paperback series that gave its name to the genre) as well as French crime writers – Simenon in particular.