Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
Product Description
Welcome to Dark City, urban landscape of the imagination. A place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life. Eddie Muller, who led readers on a guided tour of the seamier side of motion pictures in Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of ‘Adults Only’ Cinema, now takes us on a spellbinding trip through treacherous terrain: Hollywood in the post-World War II years, when art, politics, scandal, style–and brilliant craftsmanship–produced a new approach to moviemaking, and a new type of cultural mythology.
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I will grant that film noir is mostly about style, that’s film noir the thing in itself, not the explanation. Muller tries to write like the hard-boiled wordsmiths that helped give noir its flavor; but he adds so much useless patter as to give the impression that, like them, he is being paid by the word. In the end this book is about as satisfying as getting nicotine from a patch. The two stars are for the pictures.
Rating: 2 / 5
It captured the lost moments of the forgotten glorious era of black and white movies. The photos are out of this world, and the articles added an extra dimension to the magical falir of that lost era. Read it!
Rating: 5 / 5
If you like film noir you will love this book. Not only does it colorfully describe (in noir-speak) seemingly all the great noir films, it provides juicy biographical sketches of many of noir’s film stars. Add to this scores of great pictures and you have a book that aptly, skillfully, and enjoyably capture all the things you love about noir films. Ten stars!
Rating: 5 / 5
I love this book, with it’s short and easy to read vignettes about a wide variety of films, actors and subjects within the Film Noir genre. The pictures are great, and all the salacious details are served up. However, sometimes the prose runs to “too cute”; a little too impressed with it’s own smirky coyness. Needless to say, many subjects are not explored in any kind of depth. Other than that, it’s a great introduction and contains a wealth of details about my very favorite subject.
Rating: 4 / 5
Eddie Muller’s noir compilation, Dark City is one of the finest books ever written about American cinema. The pages are filled with descriptive images that embody the essence of the greatest chapter in Hollywood film making- noir. If jazz is America’s cultural contribution to music,then American film noir stands as the pinnacle contribution to the medium of motion pictures. Muller’s book, Dark City is an enlightening testament to the creative genius of directors, actors, actresses, and cinematographers associated with the creation of noir film making. Muller explores over one hundred of these dark films with interesting insights about the themes, scripts, lighting, and camera work that marked so many of them as classics. Muller cleverly divides the book’s chapters into separate realms, where the danger of noir themes often thrived. The chapter “The Precinct” features expositions on Detective Story, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and On Dangerous Ground. “Shamus Flats”, a section devoted to private investigators, critiques films such as: The Maltese Falcon and Out of the Past. These and other chapters are augmented with captivating black and white stills. Photographs of actors and actresses on lobby cards, movie posters, and frame shots adorn every page. What differentiates Dark City from other literary works written about cimema, is Muller’s chilling and revelatory research on the private lives of the people marked by noir. In many instances the dangerous fiction of celluloid noir crossed into reality for many of its players and creators. Readers will absorb the mysterious details Muller exposes about noir stalwarts such as: Gene Tierney, Robert Micthum, Lizabeth Scott, Tom Neal, Ava Gardner, Dana Andrews, and Gloria Grahame to name just a few. Muller’s writing style is witty, engaging, and stroked by a geniune infatuation for this mesmerizing cinematic art form. Any writer that describes Marie Windsor’s bust as being able to “suppport a double run of pinochle” can pull up a lazy boy and a six pack for an all night noir feast with me anytime. Every noir enthusiast should own this exceptional book.
Rating: 5 / 5