Mar 28, 2024  
2019-2020 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2019-2020 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

CT 3250 - The Dark World of Film Noir


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Film Noir (black film) is, with the western, the only truly American contribution to world cinema. It usually centered on a hardboiled American cop, detective, or insurance man who finds himself in a sick society—going into its darkest corners, ferreting out corruption. The greatest threat to the Film Noir hero is not his male antagonist, but a Medea figure who can draw him with her witchlike powers into evil. Lasting from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, film noir reflected a transitional period from the dislocation following World War II to the complacency of the Eisenhower years. This course focuses on four examples of Film Noir. Analysis will center on what made the films so evocative of its era and so popular with audiences even today.