Film Noir and the American Tradition

Selected Films (Film, Director)

Course Description

This course explores film noir as a profoundly American cinematic tradition that emerges from the fascination with evil that accompanies the fantasy of American innocence, a fascination rooted in the racial crimes at the origin of the nation. We will read film noir as an expression of the contradictions that structure U.S. society–contradictions between law and self-determination, between social collectivity and individualism, between Puritanical strictures and capitalist amorality. These contradictions inform film noir as a genre about incoherence, moral ambiguity, and the inevitability of interpretative doubt. The racial and ethnic subtexts of the genre will be examined in terms of film noir’s response to perceived threats to the social dominance of white, heterosexual, cis-gendered men.  Those same threats make the femme fatale, the figure on whom the crisis of interpretation tends to focus, and the queered man, the foil who frequently serves as the femme fatale’s accomplice, central to the sexual anxiety that permeates these films. Linking these narratives of corruption, betrayal, and forbidden desires to issues raised by feminist, queer, and psychoanalytic theory, this course will engage the tensions that continue to shape our national psyche and our cinematic imagination

Lee eldeman, course description, sis

‘Doing Shots’ Weekly Discussion Posts

These are weekly ‘blog’ style discussion posts for the films we watch each week. Each post will be organized with the week number, the film name, and the corresponding director(s).

The posts should analyze a single still within the film for its composition, lighting, and other techniques. Then, connect the still to the film’s holistic themes or its societal implications.

  • Week 9: Touch of Evil, Orson Welles

    Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan and Charlton Heston as Mike Vargas in a Touch of Evil.

    For this week’s discussion post, I was intrigued by the mention of a dream-like state, or the unconscious versus the conscious within the film. Notably, it was this scene at 1:07:00 in which Mike Vargas confronts Hank Quinlan and other American policemen on Quinlan’s planting evidence and dynamite. I wanted to point out the framing […]

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  • Week 8: Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich

    Scene shot from the film 'Kiss Me Deadly.' An older man sings with grandeur to himself while a younger man in a suit watches on, smirking at the singer. The singer is not aware of the younger man, and the two men are visually separated by pants on a clothesline hanging.

    For this week’s Doing Shots, I wanted to focus on the scene when Mike Hammer visits Carmen Trivago, friend of the deceased Nicholas Raymond, at the Hill Crest Hotel (56:00). For context, Hammer believes Trivago may have some information on Raymond’s death, who and why they would kill him. Hammer watches Trivago sing to an […]

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  • Week 7: The Third Man, Carol Reed

    Film scene from the film noir "The Third Man" Weekly discussion post

    For this week’s ‘Doing Shots’ assignment, I wanted to point out this parallel between scenes: At 59:00 in the movie, Holly shows up drunk at Anna’s apartment and Anna gets out of bed, puts on her robe, and opens the door. Then at 1:10:00 in the movie, the international police show up to arrest Anna […]

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