Film Noir Reader -ed. Alain Silver & James Ursini

Film noir remains an inexhaustible subject for study and rediscovery, as demonstrated by the first volume of the four-part Film Noir Reader, edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini. The book is divided into three sections and contains a number of engaging essays that reveal the evolution of critical thought on noir from the 1970s through the 1990s. Among my favorites are Paul Schrader’s celebrated “Notes on Film Noir,” Paul Kerr’s “Out of What Past? Notes on the B Film Noir,” Tony Williams’s “Phantom Lady, Cornell Woolrich and the Masochistic Aesthetic,” which discusses one of my favorite writers and his screen adaptations, Alain Silver and James Ursini’s “John Farrow: Anonymous Noir,” devoted in part to The Big Clock and my personal favorite, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Robert E. Smith’s “Mann in the Dark: The Film Noirs of Anthony Mann,” and the essay on neo-noir, “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre.” Together these pieces show why film noir continues to inspire fresh interpretations and passionate debate. Something I would criticize is thick font and low quality reproductions of stills.