Abstract
This chapter sets up the concepts that form the foundation of this book. It begins with “film noir” or “noir” and “neo-noir.” The problem is overuse has depleted the terms of their meaning. This book seeks to recover that meaning. Post-classical, as a theoretical perspective, helps guide a journey through 60 years of neo-noir by offering a method by which to organize and conceive of the body of neo-noir films. Neo-noir, from the post-classic perspective, becomes a mosaic of many movement of films, not just one or two phases. The movements, cohesive groups of films, fall into two general categories: one wherein the films cluster together according to a time-specific purpose and, two, groups of neo-noir films that share a theme.
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Notes
- 1.
Naremore’s More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts contains the essential, thorough review of noir criticism.
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Arnett, R. (2020). Introduction. In: Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43668-1_1
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