Course Catalog

Film Noir: Essentials from the First Wave / The 1940s

Dark, strange films about murder and other crimes have been a staple of the cinema since the very beginning. But not until the early 1940s did this type of film develop the look and tone of what the French would soon come to lovingly describe as film noir, literally dark film. Adopting a uniquely expressionistic visual style and an unhealthy obsession with deeply disturbing psychological themes, these noir films are now viewed as the by-product of one of the most influential American film movements of the first half of the twentieth century. Through the viewing and discussion of six iconic examples of a classic American style, this intensive six-week course will illustrate just why these films continue to fascinate. The films to be shown in class, in their entirety, come from the first wave of this burgeoning sensibility—the 1940s. This will be a sextet of films steeped in the beautifully dark glow of a world turned spiritually paralyzed; the noir universe at its most sublimely classical. The films: Scarlet Street (1945); Black Angel (1946) Out of the Past (1947) Nightmare Alley (1947) Force of Evil (1948) Criss Cross (1948). No enrollment limit.

This class is not available at this time.

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