Resources for the Bibliographical and Biographical Sleuth

Here are a few starting points for researching the works of twentieth-century Film Noir.

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Books and Articles:

• Biesen, Sheri Chinen. Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2005).
• Blaser, John and Stephanie Blasser. “Film Noir and the Hard-Boiled Detective Hero” Online: from http://www.filmnoirstudies.com
• Blaser, John and Stephanie Blasser. “Film Noir’s Progressive Portrayal of Women.” Online: from http://www.filmnoirstudies.com
• Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941-1953. Translated by Paul Hammond (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002 [1955])
• Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
• Buhle, Paul and Dave Wagner. Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story behind America’s Favorite Movies. (New York: The New Press, 2002).
• Bould, Mark. Film Noir from Berlin to Sin City. (London, Wallflower, 2005).
• Butler, David. Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to the Last Seduction. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002).
• Casper, Drew. Postwar Hollywood: 1945-1962. (Wiley, 2007)
• Clute, Shannon and Richard Edwards. The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism (Dartmouth College Press, 2011).
• Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir. (London: Verso, 1993).
• Dashiell, Chris. “A Crash Course in Studios.” Online: Available at cinescene.com
• Duncan, Philip. Film Noir: Films of Trust and Betrayal. (Pocket Essentials Film, 2003).
• French, Philip. “From Nighthawks to the shadows of film noir” from The Guardian UK
• Greil, Marcus. “Picturing America,” Online: http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/marcus_f06.html
  
• Hammett, Dashiell. “Arson Plus.” Available at The Library of America for free
• Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. (Limelight Edition, 1999).
• Hirsch, Foster. Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen. (A.S. Barnes and Company, 1981).
• Isenberg, Noah. Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).
• Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. (London: Palgrave, 2008 [first published 1978]).
• Krutnik, Frank. In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, and Masculinity. (New York: Routledge, 1991).
• Lyons, Arthur. Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir. (Da Capo Press, 2000).
• Mainon, Dominique and James Ursini. Femme Fatale: Cinema’s Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies. (New York: Limelight, 2009).
• Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998).
• Muller, Eddie. Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir (New York: Regan Books, 2001).
• Muller, Eddie. “Film Noir.” Online at http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/noir.jsp
  
• Muller, Eddie. “Low Company, High Style: The Eternal Lure of Film Noir.” Online at http://summerofdarkness.tcm.com
  
• Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
• Patterson, John. “Cheap Thrills” (2009) in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/28/noir-b-movies-film
• Place, Janey and Lowell Peterson. “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” (1974) (Republished in Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 1 and also available from a Western Illinois University website
• Polan, Dana. Power and Paranoia: History, Narrative, and the American Cinema, 1940-1950. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
• Porfirio, Robert. “No Way Out: Existential Motifs in Film Noir” (1976) in Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 1.
• Rabinowitz, Paula. Black & White & Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader 1. (New York: Limelight Editions, 1999).
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader 2. (New York: Limelight Editions, 2003).
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes (New York: Limelight Editions, 2004)
• Silver, Alain and James Ursini. The Noir Style. (New York: The Overlook Press, 1999)
• Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encylopedic Reference to the American Style. Third Edition. (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1988)
• Spicer, Andrew. Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. (Lantham: The Scarecrow Press, 2010).
• Truffault, Francois and Helen G. Scott. Hitchcock: Dialogue between Truffault and Hitchcock. (London: Simon and Schuster, 1983).
• Weegee. “Weegee” from Bomb Magazine
  
• Welles, Orson and Peter Bogdonavich. This is Orson Welles. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993).

Websites:

• American Independent Film: Questions for Film Analysis: http://faculty.washington.edu/kgb/independent/handouts/film_questions.pdf
• Archive.org (Public Domain Film Noir): https://archive.org/details/Film_Noir
  
• Columbia University’s Film Language Index: Columbia University’s Film Language Index
• Film Noir Foundation: http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html (Links to an external site.)
• Film Noir Studies Glossary: Film Noir Studies: A Film Noir Glossary
• Guide to Narratological Film Analysis by Manfred Jahn (2003): http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/pppf.htm
  
• Top 250 Films Noir: They Shot Dark Pictures, Didn’t They List of Top 250 Films Noir
• Language of Film Analysis: http://www.schuleplus.de/Englisch/films/filmanalysis-language.htm
• Letterboxd: Letterboxd’s List of Every Film Mentioned in Silver and Ward’s Film Noir Encyclopedia
• Sidney’s Film Noir List: Sidney’s Film Noir Page
• Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary: Twists, Slugs, and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang