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Title: The Noir Style by Alain Silver, James Ursini, Robert Porfirio, Linda Brookover ISBN: 1-58567-485-0 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 27 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Coffee Table Noir
Comment: A large, handsome book, suitably published in black and white. If you are a fan of the Noir genre, this belongs on your coffee table. The pictures, from the collections of the authors, are evocative of their milieu, illustrating the classic noir films of the 40's and 50's. There isn't quite as much information about each picture as I would like, and for a couple, such as the cover and frontspiece, no information at all. This book is a supplement to the Noir Readers of the authors, and as such, serves it's purpose well. Do not buy this as a text, but for illustrative purposes. Enjoy looking at the chilling dark dangerous ladies, the crooked cops, the doomed characters. Great pictures.
Rating: 1
Summary: Poor production values sink the project
Comment: While the idea of having two of the most knowledgeable scholars of the noir film host a coffee-table art book on the topic sounds promising, the resulting product is heinously flawed. Despite the brevity of the text, a blocky font makes it difficult to read. The 'duotone' reproduction is achieved by imposing blue plate on the black plate--making vintage photographs resemble a poorly adjusted television screen. Further, the large reproductions merely expose the grain, scratches, and dust spots that any skilled retoucher could have removed. Pick up Mark Viera's SIN IN SOFT FOCUS: PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD and see how this book should have looked.
Rating: 5
Summary: Noir Gold!
Comment: Alain Silver has already written the definitive book on the subject with his (and Elizabeth Ward) 'Film Noir: An encyclopaedic reference to the American style' and now with 'The Noir Style' he has written the definitive book about the look of these movies.
Most critics agree that style was one of the main elements of this genre and Paul Schrader went further to suggest that noir style was working out the conflict visually. Where would this kind of movie be without its deep shadows and expressive lighting? With over two hundred production stills the authors explore the various characteristics and meanings of this essentially American art form. What makes the book so wonderful for me, apart from the excellent design by Bernard Schleifer, are the stills, mostly large one to a page and beautifully printed as 175 screen duotones, they leap off the page. Each photo has a very comprehensive caption.
As well as the seven chapters there are several spreads called 'Motif' where certain visual treatments are examined in more detail, prison bars, dream and flashback, face and gesture, sexual debasement, night and the wheel and one I thought particularly interesting about photographer Weegee (his real name was Arthur Fellig and he got his obscure nickname from his job, in the twenties, at The New York Times, where he worked in the photo darkrooms removing excess water from prints before they were dried, he did this with a squeegee) he covered New York city for various tabloid papers and his style was a photographic version of the noir movies. Page forty-seven shows one of his photos of a dead man on a city pavement, wearing a blood soaked shirt, over the page is a still of Kirk Douglas playing dead from the movie 'Out of the Past', they actually have very little in common, one is sanitised reel life the other is real life.
'The Noir Style' could not be any better and with Silver's 'Film Noir' encyclopaedia you will have a very full account of this fascinating movie genre. One other noir film book I have enjoyed is 'Dark City' by Eddie Muller, a detailed text and picture study. A neat touch is that Muller's written the book in the language style of the hardboiled private eye books of the forties...all three books hit the bull's eye!
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Title: Film Noir Reader by Alain Silver, Alain Silver, James Ursini ISBN: 0879101970 Publisher: Limelight Editions Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Film Noir: An Encyclopedia Reference to the American Style by Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward ISBN: 0879514795 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: March, 1993 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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Title: Film Noir by Andrew Spicer ISBN: 0582437121 Publisher: Longman Pub. Date: 18 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir by Foster Hirsch ISBN: 0306810395 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 06 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Dark City : The Lost World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller ISBN: 0312180764 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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