ABSTRACT
As discussed in the opening chapter, the label ‘neo-noir has established itself as the preferred term for films noirs made after the ‘classical’ period (1940–59). Todd Erickson defines neo-noir as ‘a new type of noir film, one which effectively incorporates and projects the narrative and stylistic conventions of its progenitor onto a contemporary canvas. Neo-noir is quite simply a contemporary rendering of the film noir sensibility’ (Erickson, 1996, p.321). Although it is possible to identify the release of Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat in 1981 as the moment when this contemporary sense of film noir was first acknowledged and which inaugurated the current revival, there was a distinct earlier period – 1967 to 1976 – when film noir was resurrected as part of the ‘Hollywood Renaissance’, a decade of radical energy at an aesthetic and thematic level which transformed several major genres. The two chapters on neo-noir are therefore divided between this earlier ‘modernist’ phase, and the later ‘postmodern’ one from 1981 onwards. As the two chapters will discuss in detail, films noirs from each period are separated by crucial differences in style, sensibility and audience orientation which reflect many of the key changes in Hollywood’s production practices and its relationship to wider cultural changes over this thirty–year period. The chapter division retains this book’s focus on film noir as an evolving phenomenon, best approached through historical contextualization.
