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 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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  • Week 6: Out of the Past, Jacques Tourneur

    A screenshot of a film noir black and white movie. Pictured are two African American patrons of the bar, and a white private detective whose face cannot be seen.

    While watching Out of the Past, I noticed two main points- a. the heavy use of outdoor settings and b. the inclusion of more non-white actors/characters. Mainly, what does it mean for a film in 1947, with a mainly white cast and white director, to feature a scene in a black jazz bar? What does […]

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  • Week 5: Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder

    Still scene from a the film "Double Indemnity." The male character is holding a recorder and looks into the camera over his right shoulder.

                For the ‘Doing Shots’ of Wilder’s Double Indemnity, I was struck by the scene at 1hr 43min timestamp. (I will try to find a better picture of the scene)             In this still, Walter Neff is confessing/not confessing his story into the Dictaphone for Keyes to find. However, toward the end of the film, […]

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